“So,” she said, with an even more bitter expression and a disenchanted smile, in which there was much love, though it was for ever poisoned by contempt, “he has thought of that, to save this woman again! He finds that I have not sacrificed myself enough. Besides, it is logical. When one has begun, as I did, one must go on to the end. I will go.” With her forehead crossed by a wrinkle of resolution, her eyes hard, and her mouth ugly, she went on: “Very well, Vincent. You have repeated his words to me, and I thank you. That must have cost you something, too! You owed me that frankness. You promise to exactly repeat mine to him, do you not? Tell M. Molan, then, that I will act at Madam de Bonnivet’s as is arranged. Yes, I will act there, and no one, you understand, shall suspect with what feelings. But it is on one condition—tell him that, too, and if he does not keep it, I will break my promise: I forbid him, you understand, I forbid him to write or speak to me from this time onward. He will talk to me at that woman’s house just sufficiently to prevent anything being noticed. That must be all. I shall not know him afterwards, you understand. After this last act he is dead to me. Perhaps I shall really die myself,” she added in a stifled voice, “but it is all over between us.” She made a gesture with her hands as of tearing up an invisible agreement. Her eyes closed for a moment. Her features contracted with a twitch of pain, and then this creature, so feminine in her grace and mobility, assumed a tender look and a gentle smile as she got up and said to me— “Leave me now, friend. Don’t come to see me again before I let you know. We will finish the picture later on. I love and esteem you very much, and feel real sympathy for you. But,” her voice was stifled as she concluded, “but I must forget, all the same, to try and live.” Then with a proud little inclination of her blonde head and a courageous shrug of her slender shoulders, she concluded: “I am not to be pitied. I have my art left.”