midday
Marguerite was a woman in the same position as Olympe , and yet I should never have dared say to her the first time I met her what I had said to the other woman . I loved Marguerite . I saw in her instincts which were lacking in the other , and at the very moment in which I made my bargain , I felt a disgust toward the woman with whom I was making it . She accepted , of course , in the end , and at midday I left her house as her lover ; but I quitted her without a recollection of the caresses and of the words of love which she had felt bound to shower upon me in return for the six thousand francs which I left with her . And yet there were men who had ruined themselves for that woman . From that day I inflicted on Marguerite a continual persecution . Olympe and she gave up seeing one another , as you might imagine .