“Why?” I asked her in my turn. “You ought not to ask her that,” Jacques said, with a laugh. “I know beforehand what her answer will be.” “No,” she said quickly, and her mobile mouth assumed the bitter curve it had in repose. “Do not listen to him, sir. His is going to tease me, and it is very unkind of him, about one of the nervous impressions which we all have—you two as well. Do you not sometimes experience a shudder of antipathy in the company of certain people, whose presence alone freezes you and takes away all at once your memory, your power, and your mind? Their presence alone produces a feeling that one cannot breathe the same air as them without being stifled.” “Yes, I do know those antipathies!” I cried. “I feel them for people I meet by chance, whom I have never seen before, who are nothing to me, but their approach is quite intolerable to me, just as if they were my avowed enemies. Once I used to try and resist this instinctive feeling of repulsion. I found from experience that I was always wrong not to yield to it, and I am sure to-day that an antipathy of this kind, either strong or slight, is nature’s second sight, and an infallible warning that a danger threatens us through the being whose existence annoys us thus.” “You see,” Camille said turning to Molan, “I am not so ridiculous after all.” I had at once guessed the name of the person whose presence in the theatre so disconcerted this frail Burne-Jones nymph, transformed by the bad fairy presiding over her destiny into a poor devil of an actress in love with the writer in Paris the most incapable of love. If I had not guessed the name Jacques would not have left me in ignorance of it for long. He is no worse than any one else. I have heard of his good actions and seen his generosity. To my knowledge he has put his purse at the disposal of colleagues whom he had more or less slandered. It is difficult to reconcile that, for example, with the indelicate unkindness which made him name his mistress’ rival at a time when he saw the pretty child was so troubled. The explanation, however, is quite simple. Such a thing as good or evil, unkindness or generosity, never entered into his calculations. He always played to the gallery, and a single spectator sufficed to compose this gallery, which in turn made him perform the best or worst actions, and made him magnanimous or mean. While playing the part of looker-on for him I realized how correct are the casuists who pretend that our actions are nothing, but our motives everything. His motives I could see as distinctly as the movement of a watch in a glass case.