“No,” she proudly said, “there will be no scene between us. I would not have one. I will go and sell the bracelet to a jeweller, then I will go to a church, spend the money in charity, and Madam de Bonnivet will receive with her jacket two little pieces of paper—one the jeweller’s bill, and a note from the priest saying, 'Received for the poor, from Madam de Bonnivet, so much.’ This infamous adventure will at least have served to put a fire on a fireless hearth and a loaf of bread on an empty table.”
“Suppose the husband is there when the messenger arrives?” I asked.
“She must explain it the best way she can,” Camille said, and a gleam of cruelty passed into her blue eyes, which deepened in colour almost to black. “Do you think I should have moved my little finger to help her the day before yesterday, if it had not been necessary to save her to save Jacques? Ah! that Jacques has not even called to inquire after me this morning. He knows, too, that I have not acted for two consecutive evenings. He knows me and that emotion makes me ill. Vincent,” she added, taking my hand in her feverish grasp, “never love. It is such madness to have a heart in this cruel world. From Jacques I have not even had a note, two words upon his card, the little sign of politeness one owes to a suffering friend.”
“You are not just,” I told her, “he fears to face you. It is very natural. He is too conscious of his faults, and, you see, he has sent me to find out how you are.”
“No,” she said, shaking her head dolefully, “he came to see you, because he needed you for something. Confess to me what it was? From the first I told you that you do not know how to lie or scheme. Oh, God! how nice it would be to love some one like you, not in the way I love you, as a friend, but in the other way! Come, confess that you have a commission from Jacques for me.”
“Well, yes,” I replied after a second’s hesitation. There was such uprightness in this strange girl, such a rare nobility of sentiment emanated from her whole being! To finesse with her seemed to me a real shame. I therefore gave her, simply and sadly, Jacques’ message: simply, because I reckoned, and rightly, too, that the surest way to influence her was to state the facts without any phrasing; sadly, because I felt the hardness of this new demand of Molan’s. I also realized its necessity. When I had finished, tears came into her blue eyes.
“So,” she said, with an even more bitter expression and a disenchanted smile, in which there was much love, though it was for ever poisoned by contempt, “he has thought of that, to save this woman again! He finds that I have not sacrificed myself enough. Besides, it is logical. When one has begun, as I did, one must go on to the end. I will go.” With her forehead crossed by a wrinkle of resolution, her eyes hard, and her mouth ugly, she went on: “Very well, Vincent. You have repeated his words to me, and I thank you. That must have cost you something, too! You owed me that frankness. You promise to exactly repeat mine to him, do you not? Tell M. Molan, then, that I will act at Madam de Bonnivet’s as is arranged. Yes, I will act there, and no one, you understand, shall suspect with what feelings. But it is on one condition—tell him that, too, and if he does not keep it, I will break my promise: I forbid him, you understand, I forbid him to write or speak to me from this time onward. He will talk to me at that woman’s house just sufficiently to prevent anything being noticed. That must be all. I shall not know him afterwards, you understand. After this last act he is dead to me. Perhaps I shall really die myself,” she added in a stifled voice, “but it is all over between us.”
She made a gesture with her hands as of tearing up an invisible agreement. Her eyes closed for a moment. Her features contracted with a twitch of pain, and then this creature, so feminine in her grace and mobility, assumed a tender look and a gentle smile as she got up and said to me—
“Leave me now, friend. Don’t come to see me again before I let you know. We will finish the picture later on. I love and esteem you very much, and feel real sympathy for you. But,” her voice was stifled as she concluded, “but I must forget, all the same, to try and live.” Then with a proud little inclination of her blonde head and a courageous shrug of her slender shoulders, she concluded: “I am not to be pitied. I have my art left.”
I knew that Camille was incapable of breaking a promise made with such seriousness as to be almost solemnity. She had that trait common to all persons, men or women, who attach great importance to their feelings: a fastidious scrupulousness in keeping unwritten agreements, reciprocal engagements. Therefore I insisted with the greatest energy upon Jacques conforming strictly to the condition which the actress had imposed upon him, and I myself, great though the cost was to me, had the courage to observe with the greatest rigour the programme of absence and silence, the wisdom of which I understood. Around certain moral fevers, just as around certain physical ones, there is darkness, suppression of motion, and a total suspension of life. In spite of my absolute faith in Camille’s word, I was not without uneasiness when I repaired a few days later to Madam de Bonnivet’s party. I knew that the poor Blue Duchess, if not quite restored to health, was at least well enough to reappear at the theatre. When I say that I followed the programme drawn up by her with the greatest rigour, I must add that I allowed myself once to go and see her act without, as I thought, breaking the agreement, since she did not see me sitting in the pit, and I had a feeling of relief at seeing that there was no difference in her acting. I came to the conclusion that she had taken to her art again, as she had said to me, to that cult of the theatre which had been the naïve enthusiasm of the dreams of her youth. I hoped that that love which never deceives would cure the wound made by the other. But in the carriage which conveyed Jacques and I to the club, where we again dined together, this confidence gave place to apprehension, in spite of my companion’s optimism, he having become once more a person of an imperturbable assurance, which seemed born to manœuvre in false situations.