What is your evidence?"
She leaned back in the very chair where she had sat looking at Valmond a
few weeks before, her fingers idly smoothing out the folds of her dress.
"Oh, the thing is impossible," he answered, blowing the smoke of a
cigarette; "we've had no real proof of his birth, and life--and so on."
"But there are relics--and so on!" she said suggestively, and she picked
up the miniature of the Emperor.
"Owning a skeleton doesn't make it your ancestor," he replied.
He laughed, for he was pleased at his own cleverness, and he also wished
to remain good-tempered.
"I am so glad to see you at last take the true attitude towards this,"
she responded brightly. "If it's a comedy, enjoy it. If it's a
tragedy"--she drew herself up with a little shudder, for she was thinking
of that figure dropping from Elise's window--"you cannot stop it. Tragedy
is inevitable; but comedy is within the gift and governance of mortals."
For a moment again she was lost in the thought of Elise, of Valmond's
vulgarity and commonness; and he had dared to speak words of love almost
to her! She flushed to the hair, as she had done fifty times since she
had seen him that moonlit night.
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