“I tell you, my girl, this is Paris! This is a theatre! You don’t come here to be prepared for your first Communion. I do not care whom it is, it is all one to me, Marcet or Dubarras, take your choice. But you must have money, you must have lessons. Now pull yourself together—there is your first call—go!”
Jean recognized that it was the voice of Monsieur Picot, the Régisseur of the Odéon. He turned his head to see to whom the succinct advice had been given, and saw just behind him the small figure of what seemed to him to be a little child. In another moment Jean saw that she was, after all a grown-up young girl, but her obvious fear, her tiny stature, the great fawn-like eyes, the freshness and innocence of the round little face were astonishingly out of place in the Odéon. She did not see Jean. She looked over her shoulder at the manager, who had turned his attention to a clumsy scene shifter. “Mais Monsieur,” she whispered, stammering and trembling, on the verge of tears. Monsieur Picot turned his back and walked away. A second sharp electric bell rang out her call, she drew herself together, and hurried past Jean on to the stage.
Jean leaned forward, excited and curious; who was this little girl with her untouched bloom and her frightened eyes?
He caught a glimpse of the huge stage and Liane standing with easy majesty, her head bent low, her smile fixed, heavily rouged and over-emphasized. He could not see Margot Selba, but in a moment he heard her; her voice rose against the heavy background of light and heat, the thick scents and the rich, dead gleam of jewelled stuffs, like the voice of a bird when spring is young. It seemed the only living thing in a dead world to Jean. The tears came to his eyes as he listened, good, honest tears, that washed away the bitter sense of degradation from his heart. He felt himself back in the country again, with the freedom of the fields before him and the greater freedom of his own unstained, innocent heart. The song ceased, and Liane’s powerful voice took its place, showy, flexible, practised. She did what she liked with it and the scene before her, but it seemed to Jean like the change from a hillside into a hothouse. The girl crept back into the wings again; no one took any notice of her; she found a corner where an old box had been left by the scene-shifters, and then she crouched down on it, burying her face in her hands.
Jean moved quickly towards her.
“Mademoiselle, Mademoiselle,” he whispered, “do not cry so, do not be distressed—tell me about your troubles?”
The child lifted her head with a frightened movement.
“It is nothing, it is nothing,” she muttered between her trembling lips.
But Jean sat down on the box beside her, and would not be denied. “It is not nothing,” he said firmly, “that you are here in trouble and alone! It is not nothing that you, who are no more than a child, should be spoken to as I have heard Monsieur Picot speak to you to-night. Mon Dieu! I had no idea such infamies could go on here in Paris! Mademoiselle, I implore you, trust me! Speak to me, tell me what I can do for you, and believe that is the only advantage I will take of your confidence.”
“Help me, Monsieur?” asked Margot, sitting up straight and regarding this strange young man with wide-open, astonished eyes. “Why, what should you do for me? Are you not a friend of de Brances?”