“He will answer you that the street is common property, which is quite true,” said Camille, whose coolness had returned with the danger. Was it the inspiration of love? Was it a vague remembrance of the usual happenings on the stage? For our profession acts in us like automatic mechanism in the confusion of necessity. A plan formed itself in her imagination in which the honest porter would take a part, she knew, for Molan knew the way to make himself liked. “You will not prevent that man from staying there,” she went on, “you will only make him think there is something it is necessary to hide. He will make no mistake as to what that something is. Before coming here he must have received positive information. You want to help me to save your master, don’t you? Obey me.” “You are right, mademoiselle,” the porter answered, changing his tone; “if I go and make a scene with him he will understand, and if it is his wife, he has the right not to want to be what he is. I meant to have warned M. Jacques when he went upstairs that I had been questioned, but he came with that lady.” “I will warn him,” Camille said, “I undertake to do so. Now go and call a cab, but do not bring it into the courtyard, and leave me to act. I swear I will save him.” She ran upstairs while the porter called a cab as she had ordered him. The simple object, if there must be a drama, of doing everything to prevent it taking place in his house, had made him as docile as if Camille had been the owner of the house, that incarnation of omnipotence to the Paris porter. When the plucky girl reached the landing before that door she had opened so many times with such sweet emotion, she had, in spite of the imminent danger, a moment’s weakness. The woman in her in a momentary flash revolted against the devotion love had suggested in such a rapid, almost animal, way, just as she would have jumped into the water to save Jacques if she had seen him drowning. Alas! she was not saving him alone! The image of her rival rose in front of her with that almost unbearable clearness of vision which accompanies the bitter attacks of the jealousy which knows it is not mistaken. Vengeance was there, however, so certain, so complete, so immediate and impersonal! It was sufficient to allow events to take their course down the slope upon which they had started.