“23, the Rue Lincoln, as fast as you can go.” “Ah, well!” I said to Jacques after a short silence, as he was standing motionless upon the pavement. “Ah, well! She guessed what was waiting for her,” he replied sharply, “and she fled. Make your mind easy, the opportunity is only put off, not lost entirely. But why can she be going to 23, Rue Lincoln?” “It is an address she gave haphazard,” I said, “to make you jealous and make you think she was going to keep an appointment. She will give another order to her driver as soon as she is round the corner.” “Still we can go there and see for ourselves,” he replied. “If she has already taken a lover and allowed herself to play the trick she has done on me, you must admit that she is a hussy.” “No,” I replied, “only an unfortunate child whom you have ill-treated and driven mad. If she has taken a lover, that will only prove that she is the victim of one of those despairs which women have, when everything seems dark. Such an action sometimes leads to suicide though it has not done so in her case, for she is too proud.” We got into a passing cab as we were talking, and in our turn started off in the direction of the Rue Lincoln. My only idea now was to find out whether the unkindness of which she had been a victim had not projected her into some horrible calling. The phrases she had uttered to me during my first visit to her modest abode in the Rue de la Barouillére, on the temptations of luxury for her came back to my mind, and I listened to Jacques the philosopher once more in a sort of stupor. Libertines of his character never accept, without the most sincere indignation, the appointment of a substitute by the mistress they have most coldly betrayed. Still less do they allow any one to see their humiliated spite. Jacques had ceased his complaints in order to converse on ideas, and he did so with his usual lucidity. It is the gift of intelligences trained to speculate to work in a mechanical way through every shock. Molan, I believe, will dictate copy, and good copy too, in his death agony! When our cab reached the Rue Lincoln Jacques peered out with a more passionate nervousness than suited his dandyism to see if there was any carriage standing in that short street. He saw the light of two lamps. Our cab approached and we could see Camille’s carriage standing before a small house the number of which was 23. The carriage was empty and the driver had got off the box to light his pipe at one of the lamps. “The lady told me not to wait,” he replied to the question Jacques asked him, accompanied as it was by a tip of louis just as the heroes of the old school of romance used to do. My companion’s anxiety was very great at this reply, though less than mine. We stood for a minute looking at one another.