Camille Favier had reappeared upon the stage. She had begun to act with a happy grace which was changed into nervousness when the attendant brought, according to the plan, into our box the sham letter from Fomberteau. The actress missed her cue when she saw Jacques take a pencil from his pocket, scribble a few words upon a card, then hand it to me and leave the box. But the impostor was right. Her trouble as a woman only intensified her playing as an actress. She suddenly ceased to look in the direction of the box which her lover had left. The entire strength of her being appeared to be concentrated in her part, and in the great final scene very ingeniously borrowed from La Princesse Georges, she displayed a power of pathos which roused the audience to a delirium of enthusiasm. Only when she was recalled by an enthusiastic audience and returned to bow did her eyes again turn to the box in which I sat alone. She expressed in her look her pretty regret at being unable to offer this triumph to her lord and master. As far as I was concerned it was an artist’s pride in an artist. But her look was a supplication to me not to go without speaking to her, and when the curtain fell for the last time she came towards me without troubling about being seen by her colleagues.
“What has happened?” she asked. “Where is Jacques gone?”
“He has left this card for you,” I answered evasively.
“Come into my dressing-room,” she said after looking at the card, “I want to speak to you.” Her impatience was so keen that I found her waiting on the stairs for me. She seized my arm at once.
“Is it true?” she asked me point-blank. “Is Fomberteau going to fight? With whom? Why?”
“I don’t know any more than you do,” I replied still with the same indefiniteness.
“Did he know that Jacques was at the theatre this evening? Had they an appointment? Why did he not tell me about it? He knows how interested I am in his friends, especially Fomberteau. He is such a loyal comrade and so bravely defended 'Adéle’ and 'La Duchesse’! Don’t you see how strange it seems to me?”
“But Jacques seemed as surprised as you are,” I murmured.
“Ah!” she said as she gripped my arm more lightly, “you are an honourable man. You cannot lie very well.” Then in emotional tones she said: “But you would not give your friend away; I know him too.” And after a short silence she continued: “You live in the same direction as myself, Jacques told me; will you wait for me and see me home?”
She had disappeared into her dressing-room and closed the door before I could find an answer for her. How displeased I felt with myself! What contradictory sentiments I experienced in the theatre lobby, which was filled to overflowing with the departing audience! One must be twenty-three and have a romantically tortured soul as Camille’s eyes showed she had to add to the exhausting emotions of the stage those of the conversation she was prepared to have with me. How I feared that talk! How I regretted not making some excuse and leaving her! How sure I was, in spite of her words upon the duty of friendship, that this passionate child would try to make me say something I did not want and ought not say! It would have been better perhaps if this fear had been verified and the profligate had appeared in her at once beneath the lover. But do I sincerely regret the strange minutes of that night? Do I regret that walk beneath the cold and starry January sky, unexpected as it was, for at seven o’clock that evening I did not know this young woman even by name; it was so innocent, almost foolish, too, since I was the extemporized diversion of her love for another; it was so short, too, as the walk from the Vaudeville to the Rue de la Bareuillére does not take more than three quarters of an hour. Those three quarters of an hour count for me among the rare gleams of light in my dark and sorrowful life. Nothing but evoking its last charm would be worth the trouble of beginning the tale of this long and monotonous suffering.