There is always a silent corner in a woman’s most sincere confession. There was one in Camille’s. In telling me, with the pauses of jealousy maddened by its certainty, of the dramatic discovery at the rooms in the Rue Nouvelle she had not revealed the whole truth to me. She had already resolved on an audacious plan for vengeance even at the time she affirmed that she would not revenge herself. She confessed to me later that she was afraid of my advice and reproaches. Among the phrases audible through the thin partition which separated her from the bed where her rival gave herself to their joint lover, she had seized upon a few words more important to her than the rest. It was the day and hour of their next meeting. This slender Madam de Bonnivet, in whom I had diagnosed signs of the most immovable coldness—a detail which in parenthesis Molan later on brutally confirmed—was like most women of this kind, a seeker after sensations. At each fresh intrigue those depraved women without temperaments persist in the hope that this time they will experience that much-desired ecstasy of love which has always shunned them. I have learned since that it was she who, in spite of the danger, or rather because of the danger, had multiplied the meetings each of which risked a tragic termination. Camille had ascertained the secret of the real relations between the two lovers one Tuesday, and on the Friday, three days later, they were to meet at the same place. Knowing the exact moment of the appointment a mad resolution took possession of the suffering mind of the poor Blue Duchess: to wait for her rival at the door of the house, to approach her as she got out of her cab and spit out into her face her hatred and contempt there on the pavement in the street. At the thought of the arrogant Madam de Bonnivet trembling before her like a thief caught in the act, the outraged actress experienced a tremor of satisfied revenge. Her vengeance would be more complete still. The infamous trap into which Jacques and Madam de Bonnivet had lured her, the abominable invitation to perform at her rival’s evening party to reassure the husband, would be of use to her. Out of prudence and with the idea of not compromising herself with her husband, Madam de Bonnivet must give her that evening in spite of everything. She, Camille, would appear there! She would see the woman who had stolen her lover tremble before her gaze, the lover himself pale with terror lest she should make a scene, and the fear of the guilty couple was in advance of those atrocious pleasures which hatred conjures up in the mind.