She would persist. Whatever else
happened, Gyp Labelle would go on having a good time. She could not be
extinguished. There was in her some virtue altogether apart from the
body--a blazing vitality, an unquenchable, burning spirit.
He felt his hatred of her wither before it.
"And 'e say: 'You dance ver' bad, Gyp, but you make me laugh. You go
on and dance to ze others.' For 'e know who I am. My poor parents
they make ze mistake. They think: ''Ere is such a ver' nice, good
little _bebe_, and so they call me after my _Maman_, who is ver' nice
and good too, and who love me ver' much--Marie--Marie Dubois."
She turned her head towards the old woman bending lower and lower over
her fine work, and, smiling at her, fell asleep.
He returned, one night, to the hospital in the hope of being able to
work in the laboratory, and instead, coming to her room, he went in.
The action was so unpremeditated and unmotivated that he had closed the
door before he knew what he had done. But the excuse he framed in his
confusion was never uttered, for he had the right to appear
dumbfounded. She sat, propped up like a painted wraith against a pile
of gorgeous cushions, and all about her was scattered a barbarous loot
of rings and bracelets, of strings of pearls, of unset stones, diamonds
and emeralds, heaped carelessly on the table at her side, and twinkling
like little malevolent eyes out of the creases of her coverlet.
The old woman wrote toilingly on a slip of paper.
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