She took off her long black cloak as she spoke and handed it to Jacques, who received it without a word. Certain women’s sacrifices have a magnificent simplicity which crushes the man who receives them. He can only accept them and be ashamed. Besides there was no time to hesitate. Necessity was there, implacable and inevitable. Jacques went into the drawing-room into which the anteroom opened, while Camille remained standing against the wall in the outer room. “I had a knife in my heart,” she told me afterwards, “and also a savage joy at the idea that I was overwhelming her by what I was doing; it was a sorrowful joy. I also loved him again, and I have never loved him so much as at that moment. I realized how pleasant it is to die for some one! At the same time I was obliged to master myself to prevent entering and insulting this wretch, tearing her chemise and striking her with my hands. Oh, God, what moments they were!” While this miracle of love was taking place in the commonplace surroundings of this abode of love, the darkness had come. The street noises penetrated into this anteroom with a sort of sinister far-away sound, and the poor actress could hear a whispering quite close to her, the discussion taking place in the other room between the traitor for whom her devotion was meant and the accomplice in his treachery. At last the door opened and Jacques reappeared. He had his hat on his head and his fur collar turned up to conceal half his face. He had in his hand Madam de Bonnivet’s astrakhan jacket which Camille put on with a shudder. It was a little too large for her at the breast. “I thought she must be more beautiful than I am in spite of her slender appearance,” she said to me when telling me of this very feminine impression, and it was another puncture in her wound. “Come,” Jacques went on after a period of silence. He watched her put on the jacket with an expression in which appeared the last gleam of that distrust, the first sign of which had been the opening of the window after the note to make sure that Bonnivet was really there. They descended the staircase without exchanging a word. At the lodge, while Jacques was telling the porter to call another cab as soon as the first had gone, Camille fastened her double veil over her face and slipped into the cab, hiding her face with a muff which she showed to Jacques once the door was shut. “It is my poor plush muff,” she said jokingly to make his courage return by this proof of her coolness. “It does not go very well with this millionairess’ jacket. But at this distance and this time in the evening it will not be noticeable. Look through the window at the back of the cab and see whether the carriage at the corner of the street is following us.” “He is following us,” Jacques said.