“They’ll not catch me again doing Montmartre with Caracal and the duke,” he said to himself. “I was wrong to go there to-night. I have become certain that Helia is letting herself be courted by Socrate. To have come down like that—she whom I knew so reserved and sweet! And I know something else, too. I have to stop flirting with Miss Rowrer—perhaps even stop seeing her, poor fool that I am!”
And Phil went his way with lowered head, absorbed in his own reflections.
Phil’s idea was right so far as Miss Rowrer was concerned. He might really have been in danger. But he was mistaken in his appreciation of Helia, for she had not quit the circus with Socrate. Socrate had followed her, that was all—Suzanne having taken away Sœurette immediately after the departure of the duke and Caracal. Helia, worn out with fatigue, went away much later on the arm of old Cemetery.
She was full of deference for the man who had made her an artiste, and she accompanied him back to his hotel. Socrate walked alongside, without the least emotion at the sight of this Antigone protecting her Œdipus; rather, he was furious that she should lose her time with such a doddard; but he had nothing to say about it! Helia would not have understood, and Socrate remembered spitefully that the duke and Caracal were cooling their heels in vain expectation of her.
Afterward Socrate saw her home. He had so many things to say to her—things he dared not utter.
However, at the moment of taking leave he expressed a wish to go in, in order to speak more freely.
“No, thank you!” said Helia; “you would wake Sœurette, who is already in bed.”
“Besides, you have your own work.” And she shut the door in his face.
Socrate, in a rage, remained outside. What he could not say this evening he would say to-morrow; so be it! But that he—Socrate, poet, thinker, painter, sculptor, and musician—should be so treated by this little mountebank—what a humiliation! He felt that he wanted to break something. A wandering dog passed by, and with all his strength he gave him a kick in the ribs.