Whilst the cab was rolling along towards the Boulevard Bonne-Nouvelle all these scruples, which René had once so religiously observed, returned to him. But Colette's words had moved him more deeply than he cared to admit. A hideous vision had flashed across his brain. He half feared that it might come again, and he knew that Suzanne's presence was the best preventive. Lovers frequently have these apparently unwarranted ideas--the results of an instinct of self-preservation which our feelings, like animate beings, possess. The cab rolled on whilst René defended his infraction of the agreement made with his mistress. 'If she could know what I have been obliged to hear, would she not be the first to say, "Come and read my love for you in my face?" Besides, I shall only look at her for a quarter of an hour, and then go away purged of this stain. And what of the husband? Well, I must see him sooner or later, and she tells me he is nothing to her!' Madame Moraines had not failed to make her favourite lover swallow the improbable fable served up by all married women to their paramours, though sometimes the fable is true--for woman will be a riddle to all eternity--as the reports of the divorce cases prove. In the delicacy with which Suzanne had allayed his most secret and least legitimate feelings of jealousy René found an additional pretext for denouncing those who slandered this sublime creature. 'This woman the mistress of Desforges! Why? For money? What nonsense! She, the daughter of a Cabinet Minister and the wife of a business man! Claude, Claude! how could you?' This tumult of ideas was somewhat stilled by the necessity for action as soon as the poet reached the doors of the Gymnase. He was most anxious that he should not be seen by Suzanne, and stood on the steps outside for a moment lost in reflection. The first act was just over, as he could see by the people flocking out, and this circumstance furnished him with an idea for beholding his mistress without being observed by her. He would first take a ticket for one of the cheaper seats in order to get into the house; then, having found out where Suzanne was sitting--which he could easily do during the interval from the corridor at the side of the stalls--he would take a better seat, from which he could safely feast his eyes upon her adorable features.