He was laughing now, unmistakably. He said, smoothing the heavy mustache with a hand that twitched a little:
"But the performance ends here. So we may lay aside the cosmetics, costumes, and properties. The hero's green baize apron, crop-wig, and blackened eyebrows, the flour with which the heroine sprinkles her black hair, and the stockings and towels with which she disguises her charming shape. It will not seem surprising to you that a person of my dubious character should be learned in the secrets of stage disguises.... My early researches in femininity have led me into queerer places than actresses' dressing-rooms. But where did a Convent schoolgirl gain her knowledge of make-up?"
His mockery was intolerable. Her hate and scorn rose up in arms to meet it. She would be silent only for an instant longer, then she would speak and tell him all.
He was going on:
"I have here a letter, brought me some days back by the Prussian official who is in charge at the General Post Office here in Versailles. It is addressed to Mademoiselle Juliette de Bayard, 120, Rue de Provence. It is dated from Mons-sur-Trouille, in Belgium, and is written and signed by M. Charles Tessier.... I will not disguise from you that I have mastered the contents."
He showed her the letter. Monster! he had opened it. Her blazing eyes dwelt on him with a contempt he did not seem to feel. She had let the white shawl drop from about her head and shoulders. Now she straightened her slight form—(as though an artist needed the adventitious aid of towels and stockings!)—and thrust back with a superb gesture of both hands the heavy loops of white-streaked hair that masked her forehead and curtained her small face, whose cheeks, previously pale, now burned with angry fire.
He said, and as he withdrew the letter from its envelope, a small, square enclosure wrapped in white paper, slipped from the interior and dropped near his spurred boot:
"I have not only read this, but I am going to read it aloud to you. For the sake of one present whose fidelity to you deserved a confidence you seem to have withheld."
She caught one sharp breath, dropped her slender arms at her sides and stood immovably before him. Her clenched hands, tense lips and tragic brows, with that fierce flame of hatred and scorn burning beneath their shadow, betrayed the test of her self-command as he read:
"BASSELOT & TESSIER.