light in making fools of people more pretentious, what had Marise to reproach her with—she who could not refrain from malicious teasing! It was part of the same thing. Everything was part of the same thing. And the same thing always turned out to be very much the same. Also, Mme. Vallery had really always been very kind to Marise, seemed really fond of her, had given her innumerable opportunities which otherwise she would never …
"What does she want to get out of me?" Marise suddenly asked herself, struck by a sudden suspicion and wondering why she had never thought of this before.
Pondering this, unpeeling another layer, an acrid odor in her nostrils, she struck out into a longer, swifter gait, at her old futile trick of trying to hurry away from what was inside her heart.
The tall, slim, lithe girl, walking swiftly through the sweet spring twilight looked like the personification of spring-time with her fresh young face, her dewy dark eyes, her sensitive mobile young mouth, red as a dark red rose. She looked like Youth itself, welcoming in the new season. Several people glanced after her, and smiled with sympathy for her freshness and bloom and untouched virginal candor.
