'What you advised me to do,' replied René, in accents of peculiar asperity, 'and I have come to beg your pardon for having doubted your word. Yes--I have played the spy upon her. What a feeling it is! The first day, the second day, the third day--nothing. She only paid visits and went shopping, but Desforges came to the Rue Murillo every day. I was in a cab stationed at the corner of the street, and when I saw him enter the house I suffered agonies of torture. At last, to-day, about two o'clock, she goes out in her brougham. I follow her in my cab. After stopping at two or three places, her carriage draws up in front of Galignani's, the bookseller's, under the colonnade in the Rue de Rivoli, and she gets out. I see her speak to the coachman, and the brougham goes off without her. She walks for a short distance under the colonnade, and I see that she is wearing a thick veil. How well I know that veil! My heart beat fast and my brain was in a whirl. I felt that I was nearing a decisive moment. She then disappears through an archway, but I follow her closely and find myself in a courtyard with an opening at the other end, affording egress into the Rue du Mont-Thabor. I look up and down the latter street. No one. She could not have had time to get out of sight. I decide to wait and watch the back entrance. If she had an appointment there she would not go out the same way she came in. I waited for an hour and a quarter in a wine-shop just opposite. At the end of that time she reappeared, still wearing her thick veil. The dress, the walk, and the veil--I know them all too well to be mistaken. She had come out by the Rue du Mont-Thabor. Her accomplice would therefore leave by the Rue de Rivoli. I rush through to that side. After a quarter of an hour a door opens and I find myself face to face with--can you guess? Desforges! At last I have them--the proofs! Wretch that she is!' 'Not at all! Not at all!' replied Claude; 'she is a woman, and they're all alike. May I confide in you in return--that is, make an exchange of horrors? You know how Colette treated me when I begged for a little pity? The other night I flogged her till she was black and blue, and this is what she writes me. Read it.' And he handed his friend a letter that was lying open on the table. René took it and read the following lines: '2 A. M. 'I have waited for you till now, love, but you haven't come. I shall wait for you at home all day to-day, and to-night after I come from the theatre. I only act in the first piece, and I shall make haste to get back. Come for the sake of our old love. Think of my lips. Think of my golden hair. Think of our kisses. Think of her who adores you, who is wretched at having given you pain, and who wants you, as she loves you--madly. 'Your own COLETTE.'