As for the charming and noble girl who was so magnanimous by nature that it seemed a pity that she should have experienced such depraving adventures, she had no sooner recognized Bonnivet than her first spite, her furious jealousy, the legitimate sorrow of her wounded passion and her appetite for revenge all combined into one feeling. She realized nothing but the danger Jacques was in, and the necessity of warning him, not to-morrow, or that evening, but at once. A few minutes before she had made up her mind that the lovers had postponed their appointment till another day. An idea suddenly pierced her heart like a red-hot iron; suppose they had only postponed the appointment till five o’clock? Suppose at that moment they were preparing to set out for this street, at the top of which this sinister watcher was waiting? The thought that, after all, that was possible at once transformed itself, as often happens when the imagination works around the danger to a person beloved, into a certainty. She could distinctly see Jacques walking towards this ambuscade. The resolution to stop him at once without a second’s delay possessed her with irresistible force. What could she do but hasten to the Place Delaborde, where she had a last chance of meeting Molan? She was afraid she would be noticed by Bonnivet, or he might hear her voice, if she took one of the cabs on the rank, so she hurried along the Rue de Clichy like a mad woman, calling cab after cab, and feeling, when at last she took her seat in an empty one, the horrible attack of a fresh hypothesis which almost made her faint. Supposing the two lovers had, on the other hand, put forward the time of their meeting and were in the rooms, while the husband warned by a paid or gratuitous spy was waiting for them? Camille could see them once more in her imagination, with the same inability to distinguish the possible from the real. Yes, she could see them, quite sure of their privacy, taking advantage of the gathering darkness to emerge arm in arm, and she could see Bonnivet rush and then.... This unknown conclusion varied between sudden murder and a terrible duel. The unfortunate creature had hardly conceived this second hypothesis, when a tremor shook her to her very marrow. Her cab had set off at a fast trot in the direction of the Place Delaborde. What could she do then? In these instants when not only seconds, but halves and quarters of a second are counted, does real sentiment possess a mysterious double sight which decides persons with more certainty than any calculation or reasoning could do? Or are there, as Jacques Molan loved to say, destinies protected by singular favour of circumstance, which have constantly good luck, just as others constantly have bad luck? Still Camille, between two possibilities, chose by instinct that which turned out to be the true one.