He looked back towards the audience. All the seats were occupied. The ballet of the priestesses of Dagon was beginning and a libertine gayety now relaxed all faces in accordance with the merry grace of the dancers.
Mentally M. Raindal took note of the change. How many shades there were in the aristocratic depravity of the assembly! How many tiny degrees there were between their previous seriousness and their present joviality!
He marked the beat of the fast Oriental rhythm which regulated the steps of the dancers, and at the same time he furtively examined Mme. Chambannes, his dear friend, as he did not yet dare openly to call her.
A slight uncertain smile hovered on her fine little face which reverie had rendered motionless. At times, however, she would seize her glasses and aim them at a box or a row of seats; then, when her inspection was over, she would throw a sort of compensating glance at M. Raindal. When the curtain went down she took refuge with the master in the tiny salon which formed a kind of boudoir behind. Chambannes stood behind them. He gave very little attention to the words of M. Raindal, who was describing, with reference to the most recent discoveries of the exegetists, the rites and the ins and outs of the cult of Dagon. Moreover, the curtain rose again before the master had finished.
The scenery represented a garden with a green bench in the foreground and to the right the villa of delights where the crime was to be accomplished.
When Delilah sat down on the bench surrounded with shrubs and Samson, panting with love, let himself fall there beside her, M. Raindal could not refrain from casting a sly glance of allusion towards Zozé. While affecting not to have noticed it, Mme. Chambannes pleasantly accentuated with a smile the dreamy look on her face. The master thanked her with a little friendly cough.
Oh! Had he been so very much at fault this morning? Considering it calmly and at a distance, he did not regret that mad kiss, that indiscreet caress which had been at least open enough to deserve respect. Why should he try any longer to hide those sentiments of his which were so sincere? Why affect indifference, when it was the very reverse which Mme. Chambannes inspired him with?... Love? Oh, no. But a certain tenderness, a certain affection, which although it was not exclusively paternal, nevertheless did not go beyond the limits authorized by the difference in age between a very young woman and a man of advanced years. What was the use of concealing by subterfuge and illusory lies, the liveliness of this inclination? Was not history full of such examples? Without mentioning Ruth and Boaz, whose romance it seemed had had a bourgeois ending, could he not mention a great number of masters who had most absolutely fallen in love with their disciples, men or women, in spite of the unlikeness of their minds and the difference in their ages? What was there, for instance, in common between the mind of a Socrates and that of an Alcibiades?...
The sweet melody which Delilah murmured to Samson followed just in time to draw the master away from such risky comparisons. The play was approaching its climax. At the fall of the curtain the Philistine soldiery silently surrounded the little house where the betrayed hero slept. M. Raindal recited softly to himself the never-to-be-forgotten stanza:
“Une lutte éternelle, en tout temps, en tout lieu,
Se livre sur la terre, en présence de Dieu,
Entre la bonté omme et la ruse de Femme....”
He went on with it, and Mme. Chambannes declared the lines very pretty. She wished to know the name of the author.