"Reminds me of myself the other day when I thought Schenk was after me.
Do you hear anything, Pauline—you look so wild?"
"Yes, yes! Some one has arrived. Grand Dieu—which of them?
Sara—go and see!"
Miss Cordova rose and drew her friend back within the room.
"Maybe it's neither; only some one for M. Poussette."
"No, no, it is one of them and for me. I hear my name."
She sank upon a chair as footsteps were heard slowly, heavily, and somewhat unsteadily ascending the stair. The arrival was Edmund Crabbe, with the lurch of recent dissipation in his gait and his blue eyes still inflamed and bleared.
With a half-furtive, half-defiant air he advanced to Pauline, but before he could utter a word, either of justification or apology, she sprang at him with impetuous gestures and deeply frowning brows. To see her thus, in the common little room at Poussette's, clad in the plain garb of cheap mourning, yet with all the instinctive fire and grandeur of the emotional artist, was to recall her as many could, declaiming on the narrow stage of the Theatre of Novelties.
Je suis Romaine, helas! puisque Horace est Romain.
J'ai reçevu son titre en reçevant sa main,
or again, in the diaphanous rose-garlanded skirts of Marguerite Gautier, laying bare the secrets of her heart to her adoring lover. Oblivious of Miss Cordova, Pauline rushed at her own lover but did not embrace him.
"Oh, where is he?" she cried. "What have you done to him?—or with him? I insist upon the truth; I must know, I must know all. He followed you!"