His heart was beating very loudly as he went to her dressing-room. Jimmy was no longer the fellow who knew no fear. To fly away on the aerobike, to risk his skin was easy, for him at least; but to face Lily ... to explain to her ... with all those things seething within him ... and, oh, the pain he was causing her! How could he approach her after that? And could he ever get her to love him? Ah, perhaps it would have been better if he had gone and broken his neck in the street, on the pavement! Jimmy was trembling like a child; in his perturbation, he even forgot to knock at the door ... turned the knob ... entered....
Lily heard nothing, seemed crushed into her chair, with her face buried in her right arm folded on the table, while the left hung lifeless by her side. Her whole attitude expressed abject misery, profound despair; she seemed extinguished in a terrifying calmness.
Jimmy, to attract her attention, closed the door noisily. Lily stirred no more than a wax figure: one might have thought her dead.
He shivered; and, stepping forward, leaning over to her, anxiously, he placed his hand on her shoulder.
It was like a spring that is suddenly released! Lily threw up her sorrow-stricken face, down which the tears, mingling with the red paint, flowed like blood, looked at him for a few seconds with a wandering air and then leaped at him, as though she meant to bite him in the face; but her lips shriveled up in silence, nothing came from them; and she crushed Jimmy with an unspeakable look of terror and contempt.
Jimmy did not flinch:
“You must not be angry with me,” he said gently. “I was bound to do it, Lily; I had to save the theater.”
“And get rid of me!” cried Lily, wild-haired, hard-eyed, hoarse-throated, with the tears drying on her red-hot cheeks.
Jimmy was pale as death. Ah, all his dreams, too, were fading away!
“Lily,” he said, in a voice which he strove to make firm, but which trembled with emotion. “I have done my duty to everybody, yourself included! But for me, you would be lying dead at this minute and the Astrarium would be ruined. You were not in a state to appear in public ... this evening ... believe me, Lily. The stage-manager himself....”