“What about this morning’s four pages?” I asked as I accompanied him to the door.
“I have given myself a holiday,” he replied; “my two-act comedy is finished, and if I bring off this coup I shall give myself quite ten days’ holiday. What do you think of my luck? How fortunate that this adventure with Queen Anne should have happened this month, between two periods of work?”
This audacious person was quite right to talk of his luck. Had he been a moment later in going out he would have met his poor mistress on my staircase. Camille, who was usually a little later than half-past ten in arriving, was this morning early. The old Breton clock, to whose monotonous voice I had so long listened in my studio like a constant and never-heeded warning not to waste work-time in reverie, made the time twenty-five minutes past ten. When the charming girl appeared I could see at a glance that she was again experiencing an acute crisis of sorrow. Insomnia had encircled her eyes with bluish rings. Fever had cracked and dried up her lips, which were generally so fresh, young and full. A sombre flame burned in the depths of her eyes. Insomnia had made her cheeks livid, and with her fingers she was mechanically twisting a little cambric handkerchief with red flowers on it from which her teeth had torn all shape. I had before me the living image of jealousy and despair. What a contrast with the victorious smile I had just seen hovering around the lips and in the eyes of the man who had caused that pain and thought as much of it as of his first article! I realized once more that morning how easily pity leads to lies. The unhappy creature had hardly taken off her hat and cloak before I began to chide her in our usual friendly joking tone.
“I don’t think we shall do any work to-day,” I said to her, “little Blue Duchess, and I am much afraid it will not be for the same motive which made the other Duchess say, a hundred years ago, that life is too short to have one’s portrait painted; but I will say it is too short for the troubles you are making for yourself. You have been crying, confess?”
“No,” she replied evasively. “But I did not close my eyes all night. I did not even go to bed.”
“Jacques will scold you when I tell him of your conduct, and I warn you that I shall report it.”
“Jacques,” she said, knitting the blonde bar of her pretty lashes. “He looks after me well, does Jacques,” and she shrugged her shoulders as she repeated: “He looks after me well!”
“You are again unjust,” I said with my heart pierced by remorse at my own tender hypocrisy. “You ought to have heard him talk about you last evening after dinner!”
“Last evening?” she replied, raising her head and her drooping shoulders with a movement which shamed me. It betrayed such passionate gratitude. “Did you see Jacques last evening then?”
“He stopped to dinner,” I said, “and we separated at an impossible hour after midnight.”