"
"If you are right," she said, "who can be trusted?"
"One who truly loves you."
"The little duke?"
Butscha looked at Modeste. The pair walked some distance in silence;
the girl was impenetrable and not an eyelash quivered.
"Mademoiselle, permit me to be the exponent of the thoughts that are
lying at the bottom of your heart like sea-mosses under the waves, and
which you do not choose to gather up."
"Eh!" said Modeste, "so my intimate friend and counsellor thinks
himself a mirror, does he?"
"No, an echo," he answered, with a gesture of sublime humility. "The
duke loves you, but he loves you too much. If I, a dwarf, have
understood the infinite delicacy of your heart, it would be repugnant
to you to be worshipped like a saint in her shrine. You are eminently
a woman; you neither want a man perpetually at your feet of whom you
are eternally sure, nor a selfish egoist like Canalis, who will always
prefer himself to you. Why? ah, that I don't know. But I will make
myself a woman, an old woman, and find out the meaning of the plan
which I have read in your eyes, and which perhaps is in the heart of
every girl.
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