For the concierge’s wife, too, realized that Jean had ceased to be a hermit.
CHAPTER VII
JEAN did see Liane in the last act of La Fin de l’Amour, and Liane saw him.
Up to that moment she had no very definite intentions about Jean. She thought if she wasn’t too busy she would really give him an “evening” to meet a few artists. She was good-natured and liked to do inexpensive good turns, and if there was really anything remarkable in Jean’s powers it would decidedly prove something of a réclame for Liane herself. But it had never occurred to her to regard him more personally. Now as she looked over the footlights and saw in one of the front stalls the fierce ardour of his eyes, another idea occurred to her. She was extremely sentimental and not a little superstitious. “My first musician brought me luck,” she said to herself, “why not try the second? It is of course an extravagance. He has no money and no importance, but one never knows what may come of a good action.”
From this reflection it will be seen that Liane’s moral code was a trifle perverted. Still she had a moral code, as most of us have, and Liane’s took the form of occasionally doing things that did not pay her. It almost seemed to Jean that Liane’s smile was specially for him; perhaps it was. The next evening he came in time for the first act of La Fin de l’Amour though he could not again afford the stalls. It was all very wonderful to Jean, but it soon became merged and forgotten in the central wonder of Liane.
To Liane acting was a business, but it was a business brought to such perfection that it became an art. It is not enough in Paris for an actress to be beautiful, she must also act, and Liane on the stage was a very tremendous power indeed.
It seemed inconceivable to Jean that he should ever have had the privilege of words with her in private; his love became an effortless, impassioned dream. It was no use his thinking about her, so of course he thought of nothing else. Then one night he actually received a message from behind the scenes:
“Won’t you come and see me? Liane de Brances.”
He followed her messenger, though he still believed there was some mistake. Liane could not have seen him, and if she had, why should she remember him? It was five days since he had called upon her, but it had seemed like five years to Jean. The Odéon is a very big theatre—old-fashioned and given up to long passages and bare rooms; it lacks the exquisite arrangements of the first artists’ boudoir, the colour schemes and artistic furniture of the more modern theatres, but to Jean it all seemed magnificent enough, and Liane’s room of white and gold, stiflingly hot and brilliantly lighted, with a small dressing-room leading out of it, astounded him by its importance. Nothing could be too important for her, but he had never known that artists’ dressing-rooms would be the least like this. Liane was giving the little finishing touches to her third-act costume. The dresser was still in her room, passing her all the things she might want, and receiving a running fire of dispassionate abuse for her pains.
“What animals these women are!” said Liane, giving Jean her left hand, while she touched up the thick bisque of her arched eyebrows. “They are born clumsy, awkward, infuriating—now you may go,” she added to the impassive dresser, “and don’t forget to come in time for the next act; if I have to ring twice for you again, you shall be sent to paint the clown’s cheek in the next pantomime! Well, Monsieur Jean, do you realize that to-morrow is Sunday and that I wish you to meet all those grand music-makers I told you about at ten o’clock, chez moi; and how do you find La Fin de l’Amour? I perceive you have been here often enough; am I to congratulate its author on having at last found his public? The same piece five nights running—that I call faithfulness! And it is evident that no woman has influenced you, for you have never been seen in the green room!”