I could not help admiring the change of look and voice in both of them in the course of this little discussion. The sudden seriousness of their faces showed how, in spite of his vanity in himself, and his passion for her, the reality of their personality was there in the technicality of their art. They had forgotten the existence of Tournade, Figon, and myself. On their part the two men about town pretended to talk of things which interested them, which we could not understand. I heard the names of horses, no doubt famous at that time, mentioned: Farfadet, Shannon, Little Duck and Fichue Rosse, alternating with the professional phrases of the author and the actress. Ah, how quickly the shrewd Molan had appropriated the two poor ideas I had given him without mentioning their origin! His sole consideration for my feelings was to call me to support his thesis! “Ask Vincent, for he has studied faces.” “Ah, well!” he said to me a few minutes later as we were leaving before Tournade and Figon, “we will leave her a prey to the beasts, like a Christian martyr, though she may be neither a Christian nor a martyr. You saw that she conceals a little roughness under her pre-Raphaelite profile, like many of her fellows. Now we have gone, those two funny fellows will occupy her attention. What a singular machine a woman is! You would think that a watertight bulkhead separated the lover from the ordinary woman.” “Does she often lose her temper like that?” I asked him; “and why do those two fellows put up with such treatment?” “Bah!” he replied with his habitual modesty, “she would have said much more to them to prove that I was the only person she loved. For between ourselves I know that Tournade is courting her. Do you think that in their eyes the pleasure of saying while they are standing at a bar about midnight imbibing a drink through a straw, ‘We were with little Favier just now, how quaint she is?’ counts for nothing.” Then as we reached our box and I made as if to enter he said: “No! no! you forget we must first pay Madam de Bonnivet a visit.”