"There is one good thing in being old, men cannot make you suffer any more."
Robert de Ligny took a cigarette from his case.
"May I?" And he moved toward the lighted candle on the dressing-table.
Nanteuil, who never took her eyes off him, saw beneath his moustache, red and light as flame, his lips, ruddy in the candlelight, drawing in and puffing out the smoke. She felt a slight warmth in her ears. Pretending to look among her trinkets, she grazed Ligny's neck with her lips, and whispered to him:
"Wait for me after the show, in a cab, at the corner of the Rue de Tournon."
At this moment the sound of voices and footsteps was heard in the corridor. The actors in the curtain-raiser were returning to their dressing-rooms.
"Doctor, pass me your newspaper."
"It is highly uninteresting, mademoiselle."
"Never mind, pass it over."