“What did you say?” prompted Girardin.
“I—I forget; but I think I said that I would rather be a cow on the stage than a pig in a drawing-room!... But—I had no idea that he was Sarcey!”
“Well,” said Girardin conclusively, “that was he!”
Sarah was pale with dismay. “What shall I do?” she asked.
“There are only two things you can do,” answered Girardin. “Either you can ignore him, and let him continue his attacks, in which case you can say good-bye to your chances of re-entering the Comédie—at least for the present; or you can—make friends with the man.”
“But how—make friends?”
“I have heard that he is susceptible to a pretty woman!” said Girardin, drily, “and if you meet him, and explain that you did not know that it was he, that day at Madame de S——’s, perhaps——”
Sarah understood.
On the following Sunday Pierre Berton (it was he who told me the story, many years later) saw Sarcey sitting in a stage-box, dressed in a dandified full-dress and wearing all his honours. His expression was so triumphant, as Sarah came on the stage, that Berton “smelt a rat” and decided to watch carefully.
For some months Sarah’s attitude to him had been one of increasing coldness—coldness that was the more inexplicable, since he had been her friend and protector from the time she entered the theatre. He believed now that he held the key to the mystery.