“Ah! here comes Madame de Brances. O ciel! What a splendid creature she is! Do you think we are in her way?”
Jean did not answer Margot, he was looking at Liane. Yes, there was no doubt that Liane looked splendid. She was advancing towards them like some stately Atlantic liner bearing down upon a small sea tramp, serenely conscious of her powers. She swept towards them, her lips set and her great bisque-fringed eyes shining like figured Chinese lanterns under the tightened rope of her marked eyebrows. Jean glanced from one woman to the other. Margot looked like an unformed child beside Liane; she huddled a little awkwardly on her wooden box, the colour going and coming in her round cheeks. She had no weapons to match the finished vision before her, nothing but the honesty of her heart, and yet to Jean that one small jewel outshone the whole golden argosy bearing down relentlessly upon them. At least, for the moment Jean thought it did. Meanwhile, even in that moment of recognition, he slipped back into the mire. Liane leaned forward a little as she reached them; she seemed to gather Jean up and hold him in her passionate deep eyes, those terrible possessive eyes that knew how, not in vain, to slip the snare of the fowler over the fluttering bird.
“Allons, Jean, viens-tu!” she whispered in her tenderest voice, as soft and sweet as honey in the south. She did not look at Margot at all, but she had seen her.
Jean turned and followed her without a word.
CHAPTER X
THE trouble with keeping a cat in the bag is that, however good it may be for the cat, it is seldom good for the bag, and the less accustomed the cat is to this method of confinement, the worse it will be for the case containing it. Liane was not in the habit of muzzling her temper; on the contrary, she asked nothing better than a tolerably good opportunity for letting it fly. To-night, however, she had kept her temper admirably, first, when Jean had appeared pre-occupied on the way to the theatre, and secondly, on the stage when her familiar presence was greeted with less applause than Margot’s little song. She had made up her mind instantly that the song must go; but she had not allowed any hint of the intention to appear. The song could easily be cut, and once it was cut, she would keep no grudge against the absurdly fresh-looking little person who sang it. But Margot Selba humbly retiring from her part and Margot sitting on a box with Jean were two different persons. One needed chastening and the other called for annihilation. The cat could bear it no longer, it tore its way out of the bag.
The first creature that it came across under these circumstances was sure, of course, to get the worst of it—an enraged animal strikes at what is nearest. In this case it happened to be Jean, and not Margot. Liane reached her dressing-room in solemn silence; she looked at the watch on her wrist and saw that she had half an hour. Then she turned on Jean.
“Never speak to that girl again!” she cried fiercely. “Do you suppose I bring you here with me to make love to a cabotine behind my back?”
Jean drew back in anger. So this was what he got for sacrificing the first decent feeling he had had for an age! He had given up his happy little moment of virtue simply to have Liane fly in his face! He put on the air of a hard man of the world; he felt a rebuffed boy.
“Really, Liane,” he said, making a pretence of lighting a cigarette; “one would suppose you had no discrimination. Can’t you see I was merely being polite to a little girl who sang well?”