Although I was quite sure that Camille had not kept me to play the scene between La Camargo and the priest in Les Marrons du Feu, by the wonderful Musset, described so foolishly by Molan as a bad poet, my heart beat faster than usual when the dressing-room door opened. The actress reappeared enveloped in a large black cloak with a big cape at the shoulders. A thick black silk ruff was around her neck, and her head, on which she wore a dark blue bonnet, looked almost too small as it emerged from her heavy wrap. She appeared to me to be taller and younger. I could at once see by her eyes that she had been crying, and I could tell that she was nervous by the way in which she said good night to her dresser. Then, as she leant upon my arm to descend the staircase, I asked her, thinking I might cheer her by this kindly pleasantry—
“Are you not afraid of being talked about, leaving the theatre like this with a gentleman?”
“Being talked about!” she said with a shrug of her fine shoulders. “That does not worry me. Everybody at the theatre knows that I am Jacques’ mistress. I do not conceal the fact, neither does he. He has told you, has he not? Confess!”
“He told me he loved you,” I replied.
“No,” she said with a pretty, sad smile, which displayed her fine mouth and made a dimple in her pale cheek, “I know him too well to think that. He told you that I loved him, and he was right. All the same, it is good of you to want me to think that he speaks tenderly of me. I repeat to you that I shall be very quiet. I shall not try to question you. After all, this story about Fomberteau is not an impossible one. It would have been very simple though for him to have wished me good-bye first. I had looked forward so to his escort this evening.”
We were in the Rue de la Chaussée d’Antin when she said this, and it was followed by a long silence. Women who love are unconsciously cruel. But how could I expect her not to regret her lover to me when all her charm was in her spontaneity and the untouched ingenuousness of her nature? Then I began to be in love with her, and this conversation, seen when talking of some one else, enfolded me and intoxicated me with that enchantment of the beloved presence which is in itself a pleasure. The warmth of her arm in mine made my blood flow to my heart. In what a discreet pose this pretty arm leant upon mine, but with a reserve so different from the abandon of love! But her step instinctively kept time with mine. We kept in step as we walked, and this fusion of our movements, by making me feel the light rhythm of her body, revealed to me, too, that though she knew very little of me, she had perfect confidence in me. I experienced extreme pleasure at the sudden intimacy, so complete and so devoid of coquetry; my self-respect had one more idea of humiliation than hers had of pretence over her relations with my comrade. By what mysterious magic of second sight had she divined at once that I would be for her with Molan precisely the advocate she needed, and also that she could express her feelings in my presence in full sincerity?
It is a fact that, in our walk, first along the crowded Boulevards, then through streets becoming quieter and quieter, till we reached the deserted avenues of the Invalides and Montparnasse, our conversation was that of two beings deeply, definitely, and absolutely sure of one another. I will not try to explain this first strangeness, the prelude and omen of relations in which everything would be anomalous. I, who am as reluctant to receive confidences as to give them, listened to this actress with a passionate insatiable avidity to hear the story of her life. Though her confidences were very singular when addressed to a stranger almost an unknown, I did not think of doubting them, nor of rating them as impudence or acting. But time goes backward and the months which separate us from that hour disappear. The sky of that winter’s night again palpitates with its crowd of stars. Our steps, which seem almost joined together, sound upon the empty pavements. Her voice rises and falls in turn with its tender tones. I can hear the music of her voice still. I can feel again the trouble which was at the same time delicious and grievous, with which each of her words filled me: they appeared to me so touching when that dear voice pronounced them. To-day they seem to me cruelly ironical. How life, cruel life, has frozen the fresh sweet flowers of sentiment which opened in this young heart, and how my heart falters when I recall her eyes, her gestures, her smile, and the pretty way she nodded her head as she said—
“Yes, when I can go home with him like this in the evening he knows that I am happy. He knows, too, what it costs me to procure this liberty. Usually mother comes to meet me. Poor mother! If she suspected! Jacques knows how painful it is to me to lie about little things, more so perhaps than about important matters. The meanness of certain tricks makes one understand better how ugly and wretched deception is. I have to say that my cousin comes to meet me, and tell my cousin too. No, I was not born for this trickery. I love to say what I think and what I feel. At first I did not blush at my life. But for Jacques I should have told my mother everything.”
“Does she really suspect nothing?” I asked her.
“No,” she said with profound bitterness, “she believes in me. I am the revenge of her life, you see. We were not always as we are now. I can recollect a time when we had a house, carriages and horses, though I was only a little girl then. My father was a business man, one of the largest outside brokers in Paris. You know better than I do what happened: an unfortunate speculation and we were ruined. My stage name is not my father’s name, but my mother’s maiden name.”