'Get away,' said the writer, pushing her from him; 'I love you, and you know it. Why, then, do you make me suffer so? Ask René what a state I was in last night. Tell her, Vincy, and tell her she should not trifle with me. After all,' he cried, burying his face in his hands, 'what does it matter? If you became the most degraded wretch on earth, I should still idolise you.'

'These are some of the pretty things I have to hear all day long,' cried Colette, rolling back on the cushions with a laugh. 'Well, René, tell him about me too. Tell him how angry I was last night because he went home without saying a word. And then he didn't write, so I came here. Yes, I came to him, if you please. You savage!' she cried, taking Larcher by the hair, 'do you think I should trouble to run after you if I didn't love you?'

Every feature of her face expressed the real nature of the feeling she entertained for Claude—cruel sensuality, that sensuality which impels a woman to make a martyr of the man from whose power she cannot free herself. History tells of queens who loved in this fashion, and who handed over to the headsman the men whom they hated and yet desired to possess. René quietly observed:

'I was uneasy about him last night, it is true, and you were very cruel.'

'That will do!' cried Colette, with a contemptuous laugh. 'I've already told you that you swallow anything he says. I've given that up myself long ago. One day he threatened to commit suicide, and when I came here in my stage clothes, without even waiting to wash my paint off, I found him—correcting proofs!'

'But that I'm obliged to do,' replied Claude; 'you often have to smile on the stage yourself when you're really in trouble.'

'What does that prove?' she retorted sharply; 'that we are merely acting. Only I take you for what you are, and you don't.'

Whilst she rattled on, rating Claude with that savage rancour that a woman takes no pains to conceal from the man with whom she is on intimate terms, René's glance, as it wandered round the room, fell upon a directory containing the addresses of the 'upper ten' and the hangers-on of Society.

Taking it up he turned over the leaves, and to offer some excuse for his action, mendaciously remarked, 'Why, your name isn't here, Claude!'

'I should think not,' said Colette; 'I won't let him send it. He sees quite enough of the swells as it is.'