“That is it,” she said quickly. “That is it. Yes, Champmeslé and Racine; or Rachel and Alfred de Musset, the Rachel of the supper if she had loved him. Yes. To meet a writer, a poet, who needed to feel before he could write, to make him feel, to feel with him, to incarnate the creations of his talent on the stage, and thus go through the world together, and attain glory together in a legend of love, that was my dream. Do you think there can be blue enough for the heavens and your pictures in the head of a little actress, who rehearses her part in an old street in the Faubourg Saint Germain by her old mother’s side, with imagination as her only stage property? Such a desire is an absurdity, a chimera, a folly. But I thought I could grasp this chimera and realize this folly when chance threw me in the path of Jacques. I should realize it, if he only loved me;” and in a deeply moved voice, with a sigh, she repeated, “if he loved me!” “But he does love you,” I answered her. “If you had heard him speak of you this evening.” “Do not hope to mislead me,” she said seriously and sadly. “I know very well that he does not love me. He loves the love I have for him, but how long will it last?” ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CHAPTER IV How distinct the least important words of this conversation have remained in my memory with their gay or sad, sentimental or bantering, disabused or tender intonation! I could continue to note down pages and pages of details without weariness. It seems to me, while writing this upon cold mute paper, that the clock has gone backwards and it is once more the time when the conversation ended, too soon for my liking, and we reached the house in the Rue de la Barouillére. I can see myself saying good-bye to Camille before the massive door which a sleepy porter was very slow in opening. I think I can hear the sound of the bell and feel the warmth of her little feverish hand in mine, while I wished her good-bye and she appeared to me, in the light of the moon, like an adorable phantom ever disappearing. She half closes her fine eyes which were heavy with sleep, she bows her head with a smile, she puts her finger to her mouth with a malicious gesture, to remind me to be discreet over the confidences she had entrusted to me. Her little head and long cloak disappeared in the darkness and the door closed with a dull sound.