He was so interested in what would happen and so moved by his dear friend's grief that he could not help telling Suzanne all about it as soon as he reached the trysting-place. He even gave her the letter to read, and as she handed it back to him she said: 'Poor fellow!' adding, in an indifferent tone, 'Haven't you really ever mentioned me when talking together?' 'Yes, once, quite casually,' replied René, with some hesitation. Since he had become Suzanne's lover he had never forgiven himself for the question he had put to Claude about her--the unfortunate question which had drawn down upon him the sarcasm of his friend. Suzanne mistook the cause of his hesitation and returned to the charge. 'I am sure that he said something nasty about me?' 'Indeed, he didn't,' replied René, in a tone of assurance. He was too well acquainted with the play of Suzanne's face not to have remarked the look of anxiety in her eyes as she put her second question, and he, in his turn, now asked: 'How you distrust him! Why?' 'Why?' she repeated with a smile; 'because I love you so dearly, René, and men are so bad.' Then, wishing to entirely destroy the effect that her excessive distrust might have produced in the poet, she added, 'You must go and see Mademoiselle Rigaud.' 'Certainly I must,' said René; 'I intend going to-night And you?' he asked, as he often did, 'how are you going to spend your evening?' 'I am going to the theatre, too,' she replied; 'but not behind the scenes. My husband wants to take me to the Gymnase. Why do you put me in mind of it? I shall be quite miserable enough when I'm there all alone with him. . . Come, give me a nice kiss.' That voice, sweet as the sweetest music, was still in the poet's ears, and his soul was still troubled by those kisses, more intoxicating than strong drink, when about nine that night he entered the stage door of the Théâtre Français in order to reach the celebrated green-room. He cast a glance round the doorkeeper's lodge, remembering that the room had been one of the stations in Claude's Calvary. Frequently, when entering the theatre together, Larcher would say to his friend as he pointed to the pigeon-hole that contained Colette's letters: 'If I stole them I should perhaps know the truth.' 'How happy I am,' thought René, 'not to know that terrible malady called suspicion!' And he smiled as he ascended the staircase, whose walls are covered with the portraits of actors and actresses of a bygone age. There, fixed on the canvas, are the grinning faces of past Scapins--there the Célimènes, who lived and loved long years ago, still smile down upon us. These reminders of mirth for ever vanished, of passions for ever stilled, of once happy generations for ever gone, have something strangely sad about them for the dreamers who feel their life, like all life, slipping away, and who realise the brevity of human joys.