She had disappeared into her dressing-room and closed the door before I could find an answer for her. How displeased I felt with myself! What contradictory sentiments I experienced in the theatre lobby, which was filled to overflowing with the departing audience! One must be twenty-three and have a romantically tortured soul as Camille’s eyes showed she had to add to the exhausting emotions of the stage those of the conversation she was prepared to have with me. How I feared that talk! How I regretted not making some excuse and leaving her! How sure I was, in spite of her words upon the duty of friendship, that this passionate child would try to make me say something I did not want and ought not say! It would have been better perhaps if this fear had been verified and the profligate had appeared in her at once beneath the lover. But do I sincerely regret the strange minutes of that night? Do I regret that walk beneath the cold and starry January sky, unexpected as it was, for at seven o’clock that evening I did not know this young woman even by name; it was so innocent, almost foolish, too, since I was the extemporized diversion of her love for another; it was so short, too, as the walk from the Vaudeville to the Rue de la Bareuillére does not take more than three quarters of an hour. Those three quarters of an hour count for me among the rare gleams of light in my dark and sorrowful life. Nothing but evoking its last charm would be worth the trouble of beginning the tale of this long and monotonous suffering. Although I was quite sure that Camille had not kept me to play the scene between La Camargo and the priest in _Les Marrons du Feu_, by the wonderful Musset, described so foolishly by Molan as a bad poet, my heart beat faster than usual when the dressing-room door opened. The actress reappeared enveloped in a large black cloak with a big cape at the shoulders. A thick black silk ruff was around her neck, and her head, on which she wore a dark blue bonnet, looked almost too small as it emerged from her heavy wrap. She appeared to me to be taller and younger. I could at once see by her eyes that she had been crying, and I could tell that she was nervous by the way in which she said good night to her dresser. Then, as she leant upon my arm to descend the staircase, I asked her, thinking I might cheer her by this kindly pleasantry— “Are you not afraid of being talked about, leaving the theatre like this with a gentleman?” “Being talked about!” she said with a shrug of her fine shoulders. “That does not worry me. Everybody at the theatre knows that I am Jacques’ mistress. I do not conceal the fact, neither does he. He has told you, has he not? Confess!” “He told me he loved you,” I replied.