"I meant no harm."
"Then you really did not know our custom? You were unprepared? You would willingly have laid out a few centimes on a flower to give me pleasure, had you been aware that it was expected? Say so, and all is forgotten, and the pain soothed."
"I did know that it was expected: I was prepared; yet I laid out no centimes on flowers."
"It is well--you do right to be honest. I should almost have hated you had you flattered and lied. Better declare at once 'Paul Carl Emanuel --je te déteste, mon garçon!'--than smile an interest, look an affection, and be false and cold at heart. False and cold I don't think you are; but you have made a great mistake in life, that I believe; I think your judgment is warped--that you are indifferent where you ought to be grateful--and perhaps devoted and infatuated, where you ought to be cool as your name. Don't suppose that I wish you to have a passion for me, Mademoiselle; Dieu vous en garde! What do you start for? Because I said passion? Well, I say it again. There is such a word, and there is such a thing--though not within these walls, thank heaven! You are no child that one should not speak of what exists; but I only uttered the word--the thing, I assure you, is alien to my whole life and views. It died in the past--in the present it lies buried--its grave is deep-dug, well-heaped, and many winters old: in the future there will be a resurrection, as I believe to my souls consolation; but all will then be changed--form and feeling: the mortal will have put on immortality--it will rise, not for earth, but heaven. All I say to you, Miss Lucy Snowe, is--that you ought to treat Professor Paul Emanuel decently."
I could not, and did not contradict such a sentiment.
"Tell me," he pursued, "when it is your fête-day, and I will not grudge a few centimes for a small offering."
"You will be like me, Monsieur: this cost more than a few centimes, and I did not grudge its price."
And taking from the open desk the little box, I put it into his hand.
"It lay ready in my lap this morning," I continued; "and if Monsieur had been rather more patient, and Mademoiselle St. Pierre less interfering--perhaps I should say, too, if I had been calmer and wiser--I should have given it then."
He looked at the box: I saw its clear warm tint and bright azure circlet, pleased his eyes. I told him to open it.