“Come,” he began in a low voice, “what is it? You know if you are lying, and have come to make a scene.”
“Be quiet, wretch!” she replied without deigning to lower her voice; “if I were a woman to make scenes, should I have neglected the opportunity when you came here with her last Tuesday at three o’clock? Yes, I was in that room, there behind the alcove, and I heard everything; do you understand? everything, I did not come out and I let you go. There is no question of that. The husband of that woman is at the corner of the street watching for you. You looked out of the window and saw the carriage. I don’t want him to kill you in spite of what you have done to me. I love you too well. That is the reason I am here.”
Molan had watched this strange girl’s face while she talked. Suspicious though he was, that being the punishment of men who have lied to women too often, he realized that Camille was speaking the truth. Then he made a generous movement, his first. If he is an egoist, comedian, and a knave, he does not lack courage. He has several times, because of slanderous articles, fought very unnecessarily and very bravely. Perhaps too, for the idea of playing to the gallery is never absent from certain minds even in solemn moments, he was thinking of the report of the drama, if drama there was, which the newspapers would publish far and wide. A few words he said to me later make one think so: “You must admit that I missed a magnificent advertisement!” But who can tell what the thought at the back of his head was, and perhaps after all those words were only the after-thought of a man of his kind to conceal his rare natural outbursts. Still, adjusting his jacket and taking his hat from a peg in the anteroom, he answered in a loud voice—
“I believe you and thank you. It is enough. I know now what I have to do.”
“Do you mean to go down?” she said. “You are going to meet danger? Will that save you, answer me, when you go and ask that man—what? What he is doing there? It would be sacrificing this woman, and you have no right to do so. If Bonnivet himself followed you, he saw a woman enter. If he had you followed, he knows that a woman is here. He must see a woman leave with you in a cab and conceal herself. He must follow the cab and leave this street clear for her to escape during that time. Ah, well! you must go out with me. There is a cab waiting. I have had it fetched. We will get into it; do not refuse and do not argue. Bonnivet will see us do so and will follow us in his carriage. He will expect to surprise you with her; he will surprise you with me, and you will be saved.” She took him in her arms unconsciously, then pushed him violently away from her and went on in a low voice: “We are almost the same height, go and ask for her cloak. She will take mine and go five minutes after us, after she has seen her husband’s carriage go. Wish her good-bye, and be sure she does not come to thank me. If I saw her I might not be able to control myself.”
She took off her long black cloak as she spoke and handed it to Jacques, who received it without a word. Certain women’s sacrifices have a magnificent simplicity which crushes the man who receives them. He can only accept them and be ashamed. Besides there was no time to hesitate. Necessity was there, implacable and inevitable. Jacques went into the drawing-room into which the anteroom opened, while Camille remained standing against the wall in the outer room. “I had a knife in my heart,” she told me afterwards, “and also a savage joy at the idea that I was overwhelming her by what I was doing; it was a sorrowful joy. I also loved him again, and I have never loved him so much as at that moment. I realized how pleasant it is to die for some one! At the same time I was obliged to master myself to prevent entering and insulting this wretch, tearing her chemise and striking her with my hands. Oh, God, what moments they were!”
While this miracle of love was taking place in the commonplace surroundings of this abode of love, the darkness had come. The street noises penetrated into this anteroom with a sort of sinister far-away sound, and the poor actress could hear a whispering quite close to her, the discussion taking place in the other room between the traitor for whom her devotion was meant and the accomplice in his treachery. At last the door opened and Jacques reappeared. He had his hat on his head and his fur collar turned up to conceal half his face. He had in his hand Madam de Bonnivet’s astrakhan jacket which Camille put on with a shudder. It was a little too large for her at the breast. “I thought she must be more beautiful than I am in spite of her slender appearance,” she said to me when telling me of this very feminine impression, and it was another puncture in her wound.
“Come,” Jacques went on after a period of silence. He watched her put on the jacket with an expression in which appeared the last gleam of that distrust, the first sign of which had been the opening of the window after the note to make sure that Bonnivet was really there. They descended the staircase without exchanging a word. At the lodge, while Jacques was telling the porter to call another cab as soon as the first had gone, Camille fastened her double veil over her face and slipped into the cab, hiding her face with a muff which she showed to Jacques once the door was shut.
“It is my poor plush muff,” she said jokingly to make his courage return by this proof of her coolness. “It does not go very well with this millionairess’ jacket. But at this distance and this time in the evening it will not be noticeable. Look through the window at the back of the cab and see whether the carriage at the corner of the street is following us.”
“He is following us,” Jacques said.