You will help me,
won't you? You will find me customers?"
Then she began talking of the new life which she was about to live. She
wanted to arrange her room and hang it with cretonne, something pretty,
with a pattern of little blue flowers. She would buy it out of the first
money she could save. Blanche had spoken to her of the big shops where
things could be bought so cheaply. To go out with Blanche and run about a
little would be so amusing for her, who, confined to her bed since
childhood, had never seen anything. Then Pierre, who for a moment had
been calmer, again began to suffer, for he could divine all her glowing
desire to live, her ardour to see everything, know everything, and taste
everything. It was at last the awakening of the woman whom she was
destined to be, whom he had divined in childhood's days--a dear creature
of gaiety and passion, with blooming lips, starry eyes, a milky
complexion, golden hair, all resplendent with the joy of being.
"Oh! I shall work, I shall work," she resumed; "but you are right,
Pierre, I shall also amuse myself, because it cannot be a sin to be gay,
can it?"
"No, surely not, Marie."
"On Sundays we will go into the country, oh very far away, into the woods
where there are beautiful trees. And we will sometimes go to the theatre,
too, if papa will take us.
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