It is a fact that, in our walk, first along the crowded Boulevards, then through streets becoming quieter and quieter, till we reached the deserted avenues of the Invalides and Montparnasse, our conversation was that of two beings deeply, definitely, and absolutely sure of one another. I will not try to explain this first strangeness, the prelude and omen of relations in which everything would be anomalous. I, who am as reluctant to receive confidences as to give them, listened to this actress with a passionate insatiable avidity to hear the story of her life. Though her confidences were very singular when addressed to a stranger almost an unknown, I did not think of doubting them, nor of rating them as impudence or acting. But time goes backward and the months which separate us from that hour disappear. The sky of that winter’s night again palpitates with its crowd of stars. Our steps, which seem almost joined together, sound upon the empty pavements. Her voice rises and falls in turn with its tender tones. I can hear the music of her voice still. I can feel again the trouble which was at the same time delicious and grievous, with which each of her words filled me: they appeared to me so touching when that dear voice pronounced them. To-day they seem to me cruelly ironical. How life, cruel life, has frozen the fresh sweet flowers of sentiment which opened in this young heart, and how my heart falters when I recall her eyes, her gestures, her smile, and the pretty way she nodded her head as she said— “Yes, when I can go home with him like this in the evening he knows that I am happy. He knows, too, what it costs me to procure this liberty. Usually mother comes to meet me. Poor mother! If she suspected! Jacques knows how painful it is to me to lie about little things, more so perhaps than about important matters. The meanness of certain tricks makes one understand better how ugly and wretched deception is. I have to say that my cousin comes to meet me, and tell my cousin too. No, I was not born for this trickery. I love to say what I think and what I feel. At first I did not blush at my life. But for Jacques I should have told my mother everything.” “Does she really suspect nothing?” I asked her. “No,” she said with profound bitterness, “she believes in me. I am the revenge of her life, you see. We were not always as we are now. I can recollect a time when we had a house, carriages and horses, though I was only a little girl then. My father was a business man, one of the largest outside brokers in Paris. You know better than I do what happened: an unfortunate speculation and we were ruined. My stage name is not my father’s name, but my mother’s maiden name.” “But Jacques has not told me that,” I said in such an astonished way that she shrugged her fine shoulders. What disillusion there was already in that sad and gentle gesture which indicated that she clearly judged the man whom she continued to love so much.