When the poor child afterwards told me the details of this terrible day she did not make herself better than she really was. She confessed to me that the temptation was so strong that she had to act with frenzy and fury to put something irreparable between herself that moment, so she began to ring the bell at the door, first of all once, then twice, then three times, then ten times, with that prolonged ring which gives an accent of mad insistence to the bell. She could see in her mind as clearly as if she were in the room the two lovers, attracted by the bell, first laughing at the thought that it was an inopportune visitor, then exchanging glances in silence, Madam de Bonnivet in affright, and Jacques trying to reassure her, as they both got up. How she would have liked to have shouted “quick, quick!” Then she began to knock repeatedly at the door with her clenched fist. Afterwards she listened. It seemed to her, for the over-excitement of her anguish doubled the power of her senses, that she could distinguish a noise, a creaking of the floor beneath a stealthy step on the other side of the still closed door; and applying her mouth to the crack of the door to make sure of being heard— “It is I, Jacques,” she cried, “It is I, Camille. Open the door, I beg of you, your life is in danger. Open the door, Pierre de Bonnivet is in the street.” There was no reply. She was silent, listening once more and asking herself whether she were mistaken in thinking she heard a footstep. Then still more maddened, she began again to ring the bell at the risk of attracting the attention of some other resident in the house; she knocked at the door and called out: “Jacques, Jacques, open the door!” and she repeated: “Pierre de Bonnivet is below!” There was still no reply. In her paroxysm of fear a new idea occurred to her. She went down to the porter, who had come back with the cab, and who was now distracted and moaning in naïve egoism. “This comes of being too good. If anything happens we shall get discharged. Where shall we go then? Where shall we get another place?” “Give me pencil and paper,” she said, “and see if the watcher is still there.” “He is still there,” the porter answered, and seeing Camille fold the paper on which she had feverishly scribbled a few lines, “I see,” he said, “you are going to slip the note under the door. But that won’t get the lady out. If I had a row with the fellow, we should both be locked up, and while explanations were taking place she could escape and there would be no scandal in the house.” “That would be one way,” Camille replied, though she could not, in spite of the gravity of the danger, help smiling at the idea of a struggle between the man of the people and the elegant sportsman Pierre de Bonnivet; “but I think mine is the better plan.”