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224 villain! Ah how long your hair is! And how thin you are! And I, have I changed much! Am I still beautiful?"

She placed her arms around my neck and rested her head on my shoulder:

"Tell me what you have been doing here, how you have spent your time, what you have been thinking about. Tell it all to your little wine. And don't tell lies. Tell her everything, everything."

Then I described my furious walks, my prostrations on the dune, my sobbing, the fact that I had been seeing her everywhere, calling her like a madman in the wind, in the tempest.

"Poor little thing!" she sighed. "And you probably have not even a raincoat."

"And you? you, my Juliette? Did you ever think of me?"

"Ah! When I found you gone from the house I thought I would die. Celestine told me that a man had come to take you away! Still I waited. . . . He will come, he will come. . . . But you did not come back. The next morning I ran to Lirat! Oh, if you only knew how he received me! . . how he treated me! And I asked everybody: 'Do you know where Jean is?' And no one could answer me. Oh, you naughty boy! To leave me like that. . . without a word! Don't you love me any more? Then, you understand, I wanted to forget myself. I was suffering too much."

Her words had a sharp, curt ring in them:

"As for Lirat, you may rest assured, my dear, I'll get even with him. You'll see! It'll be a farce! What a mean person your friend Lirat is! But you'll see." One thing tormented me: how many days or. weeks would Juliette stay with me? She had brought six trunks with her; hence she intended to remain at