“Then you are saved,” she replied. She pressed his hand passionately, in
her clasp allaying the anxiety of the cruel moments which she had been
through and burst into tears. He could still find no words to thank her,
and to relieve his embarrassment he tried, as he had often done when
they were in a cab together, and had had a quarrel, to put his arm round
the young woman’s waist, draw her towards him and snatch a kiss. His
movement brought back her furious hatred and jealousy, and repulsing him
fiercely she said—
“No, never, never again.”
“My poor Mila,” he said, calling her by a pet name he used in moments of
passion.
“Don’t call me that,” she interrupted, “the woman of whom you are
talking is dead, you have killed her.”
“But you love me,” he insisted. “Ah! how you love me to have done what
you did just now!”
It was her turn to make him no answer. The cab reached the top of the
Rue de Babylone without the two lovers exchanging any other words than
this question which Camille asked from time to time: “Are we still being
followed?” and Jacques’ reply: “Yes.”
This furious pursuit by the jealous husband displayed such an evident
resolve for vengeance that the actress and her companion felt again the
anguish they had already experienced—she when she recognized the face of
the watcher at the window of the stationary carriage, he when the sound
of the bell surprised him in Madam de Bonnivet’s arms. Would the husband
be duped by the plan Camille had thought out? The fact of his waiting
till their cab stopped to approach the two fugitives testified to his
uncertainty, or else, sure of not losing sight of the cab, he preferred
to have an explanation with the man whom he believed to be his wife’s
lover in a more out-of-the-way place, where he would alight. At last
Camille recognized the church of Saint François Xavier which reared its
two slender towers through the mist.
“Here is a good place to stop,” she said as she tapped for the driver to
do so. “You will see the other carriage stop too and Bonnivet get out.
He will rush towards us, and then we shall need all our coolness. Let me
get out first, and if he asks why we conceal ourselves like this, talk
of mother.”
It was one of those rapid scenes, which the actors themselves, when they
recall them, think they have dreamt, and do not know whether they have
experienced a sensation of tragedy or comedy. Life is like that,
oscillating from one to the other of these two poles with an
instantaneousness which has never been expressed, I think, by any writer
and never will be. The change is too sudden. At the moment Camille set
foot upon the pavement at the foot of the church steps, she saw Pierre
de Bonnivet suddenly rise up before her; he took her arm and suddenly
recognized her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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