“François, because you never loved a woman, you don’t know what it means, to see her wretched and foolish and crying her eyes out for a worthless dog, as Diane is doing now.”
“True, true, true!” laughed François, “I have done many foolish things in my life, but I never intend to love any woman, especially Diane. Ha, ha! Here, take this stage dagger and kill yourselves like a couple of lovers in grand opera. It is not much of a weapon, but it will do the job. It is the only way out of a three-cornered love affair.”
“François, you are so unfeeling,” said Diane, angrily, and drying her eyes.
As the stage dagger came clattering over the canvas, François got down off his bucket on the other side.
“Never loved a woman!” muttered François to himself. He had a habit common to imaginative persons, of talking to himself when he was under a great stress. “There they go off together. I wonder if they have taken the dagger with them.”
He sat motionless, gazing into the dingy little unframed mirror hung against the canvas, apparently fascinated by the glare in his own eyes.
“Don’t stand on that bucket again, François, my man,” he said to himself between his clenched teeth. “If the dagger is on the floor— It is a clumsy thing, a blunt and horrid weapon to use on one’s self.”
In vain he tried to hold himself by his own glance into the mirror, as one man tries to cow another by his gaze. He backed away until his foot struck the overturned bucket; then he jumped up and glanced over into Diane’s dressing-room. No, there was no dagger on the floor; there was nothing but the box, which was locked, and a bit of a mirror, a towel and soap, and a comb and brush. As François looked, his eyes lost their wild expression. He breathed freely like a man released from the grip of a wild beast. He even laughed, and in his excess of relief, turned a double somersault on the floor, and putting on his shabby coat and shabbier hat, went off whistling gaily. As he came out of the narrow, black alley entrance which did duty for a stage entrance, he saw the Marquis Egmont de St. Angel stepping across the street toward the Hotel Metropole. He had gone through his usual performance of watching Diane go home.
“Halloo! my dear Egmont of the Holy Angels,” cried François, “I will take supper with you to-night if you will ask me, or if you will pay for the supper, I won’t even stand on the asking.”
“Come along, then,” answered the Marquis. He was willing to pay for François’ supper in order to talk about Diane.