Eponine glances over at Sarah, surprised by her silence, how she’s almost choking on her words. Eponine hasn’t said it for shock value, hasn’t said it for sympathy. She actually likes Montparnasse half the time, or she did anyway. The girl’s been so ignored and overlooked and starved of any positivity that she considers Montparnasse’s actions as love and a relationship. It’s just how he enjoys it too, and she fights to convince herself she enjoys it, or at least deserves it.

None of this crosses her mind though, for she is already picturing Marius.
“Oh, beautiful. He is so - so lovely. He ain’t scum, you see? He’s a student, rich and that. I could have been thus. I wish yes. He might have noticed me then. Such hair he has, brown and it hangs just so. He doesn’t know a knife or nothing. He’s all clean and he has a mirror. If I were pretty, he would have loved me, I know. He is so lovely. All over Paris he wanders, and never does he see me or want me. It’s stupid, I know.?”