THE UNUSABLE PLOT.
Here is another plot, but unfortunately it belongs to a friend of mine, so that I cannot use it.
If is half past four in Paris—stories of this class are always put in Paris—and the hero, who is also the villain, goes into a church. He stops at one of the chapels and looks in. A woman is there, but the light is dim and he cannot at first be sure that it is she whom he seeks, women’s backs being all somewhat alike.
She is kneeling, and she has been crying, though the hero cannot see that. He speaks to her and thanks her for giving him this opportunity of seeing her, and is going to take her hand; but she interrupts him and tells him that it is all a terrible mistake, that she cares for him to be sure, but that it is in a platonic way as a brother, that she truly loves her husband, and is sorry for all that has happened.
The hero who is also a villain listens with half a smile: he has seen women repent before, and it adds zest to the chase. His manner warms and he makes love admirably.
The heroine is nice—so the person who made this plot told me—and the hero is horrid. His hair is a little thin on the top of his head, and his boots are carefully polished, and he is a little fat. He is always polite to a pretty woman, but his politeness is something of an insult.
It is because the heroine is really nice, I suppose, that she at last persuades him that she does love her husband and not him. Then he goes away, and she, sinking down on the priedieu, listens to the click of his polished heels on the marble floor of the church. She sees at her feet the flowers which he had worn in his button-hole, and she picks them up and kisses them passionately. She is going to hide them in her bosom: but then being really nice she lays them before the figure of the Virgin, with a little prayer and then goes away.
As for the hero who is also the villain, he is piqued that it should be she that has stopped loving first; but is perhaps as well, he reflects, for she was beginning to bore him.
He looks at his watch and jumps into a cab. The horse goes fast, for the hero has an engagement at half-past five o’clock with Therese and has offered the cabman fifty centimes pour-boire if he will get to her house on time.