"Because my position prevented it," he sighed. "I could not propose, a poor devil like me! Do I lodge in an attic from choice? But you are the only woman I ever wanted for my wife."
After a pause, she said softly, "I never knew you cared."
"I shall never care for anybody else," he answered. And then her mother came in with the vegetables.
It is easy to believe what one wishes, and she wished to believe Legrand's protestations. She began to pity herself profoundly, feeling that she had thrown away the substance for the shadow. In the sentimentality to which she yielded, even the prospect of being a star turn failed to console her; and during the next few weeks she invented reasons for visiting at her mother's more frequently than ever.
After these visits, Legrand used to smirk to himself in his attic. He reflected that the turn would, probably, earn a substantial salary for a long time to come. If he persuaded her to run away with him when the show had been produced, it would be no bad stroke of business for him! Accordingly, in their conversations, he advised her to insist on the Illusion being her absolute property.
"One can never tell what may occur," he would say. "If the managers arranged with Bourjac, not with you, you would always be dependent on your husband's whims for your engagements." And, affecting unconsciousness of his real meaning, the woman would reply, "That's true; yes, I suppose it would be best—yes, I shall have all the engagements made with me."
But by degrees even such pretences were dropped between them; they spoke plainly. He had the audacity to declare that it tortured him to think of her in old Bourjac's house—old Bourjac who plodded all day to minister to her caprice! She, no less shameless, acknowledged that her loneliness there was almost unendurable. So Legrand used to call upon her, to cheer her solitude, and while Bourjac laboured in the workroom, the lovers lolled in the parlour, and talked of the future they would enjoy together when his job was done.
"See, monsieur—your luncheon!" mumbled Margot, carrying a tray into the workroom on his busiest days.
"And madame, has madame her luncheon?" shouted Bourjac. Margot was very deaf indeed.
"Madame entertains monsieur Legrand again," returned the housekeeper, who was not blind as well.