LUCIE. You said you sent a message to him at the restaurant?
ANNETTE. Yes.
LUCIE. Did he come?
ANNETTE. Yes. He said he thought some chorus-girl wanted him.
LUCIE. Oh! And when he found it was you?
ANNETTE. He took me out into the street for fear I should be recognized, and I had to explain it to him in the street. [A pause]. People passing by stared at us, and some of them laughed. [With passion and pain] Oh! if I only had no memory!
LUCIE. Tell me, darling, tell me.
ANNETTE [with violence] Oh, I’ll tell you. You’ll despise me a little more; but what can that matter to me now? First he pretended not to understand me: he forced me to say it quite plainly: he did it on purpose—either to torture me, or to give himself time to think. You’ll never guess what he said—that it wasn’t true.
LUCIE. Oh!
ANNETTE. Yes, that it wasn’t true. He got angry, and he began to abuse me. He said he guessed what I was up to; that I wanted to make a scandal to force him to marry me—oh, he spared me nothing—to force him to marry me because he was rich. And when that made me furious, he threatened to call the police! I ought to have left him, run away, come home, oughtn’t I? But I couldn’t believe it of him all at once, like that! And I couldn’t go away while I had any hope. You see, as long as I was with him, nothing was settled: as long as I was holding to his arm it was as if I was engaged. When he was gone I should only be a miserable ruined girl, like dozens of others. Then—I was afraid of making him angry: my life was at stake: and to save myself I went down into the very lowest depths of vileness and cowardice. I cried, I implored. I lost all shame and I offered to go with him to a doctor to-morrow to prove that what I told him was true. And what he said then I cannot tell you—not even you—it was too much—too much—I didn’t understand at first. It was only afterwards, coming back, going over all his words, that I made out what he meant. He didn’t believe what he said. He couldn’t have believed what he said. At any rate he knows that I am not a girl out of the streets. But at first I didn’t understand. Then—where was I? I don’t remember—At last he looked at his watch and said he had only just time to catch the train. He said good-bye and started off at a great pace to the station. I followed him imploring and crying. I was so ashamed of my cowardice. It was horrible and absurd! I couldn’t believe it was the end of everything. I was all out of breath—almost running—and I prayed him for the sake of his child, for the sake of my love, of my misery, of my very life; and I took hold of his arm to keep him back. My God! what must I have looked like! At the station entrance he said, ‘Let go your hold of me.’ I said, ‘You shall not go.’ Then he rushed to the train, and jumped into a carriage, and almost crushed my fingers in the door; and he went and hid behind his mother, and she threatened too to have me arrested. And Gabrielle sat there looking white and pretending not to know me. I came back. I haven’t had courage enough to kill myself, but I wish I was dead! [Breaking into sobs, and in a voice of earnest supplication] Lucie, dear, I don’t want to go through all that’s coming—I’m too little, I’m too weak, I’m too young to bear it. Really, I haven’t the strength.