But to continue, I spent the day before Madam de Bonnivet’s dinner in contemplation. Then when the moment of departure had come, I wished to bid adieu to this picture, or, rather, to ask its pardon. I experienced in the presence of this dream portrait, with which I had spent a sweet romantic week, as much inner remorse as if it had been the image, not of a chimera, but of an actually betrayed _fiancée_. I can see myself now as I appeared in the large mirror of the studio, walking with my fur coat open like a guilty man towards the canvas, which, after gazing at for the last time, I was about to hide by turning it face towards the wall in an adjoining garret. Did not the Camille Favier of my fancy disappear to give place to another as pretty, as touching perhaps, but not my Camille? But come, my sweet phantom, one more sigh, one more look, and I will return to reality. Reality was, in fact, a cab waiting at the door to take me through the driving rain to the Rue des Écuries d’Artois, where the fashionable rival of the pretty actress dwelt. What would she say when Jacques told her that I had dined at her rival’s house? He would be sure to tell her in order to enjoy my embarrassment. What would Madam de Bonnivet herself say? Why had she invited me? What did I really know about it? What did I know of her, save that the sight of her gave me a pronounced feeling of antipathy, and Jacques had told me many unpleasant things about her? But my antipathy might be mistaken, and Jacques might be slandering her as he did Camille Favier. “Suppose,” I asked myself, “this coquette is caught in the net? It is not very likely,” I replied, “seeing the hard blue of her eyes, her thin lips, her sharp profile, and the haughty harshness of her face. But still she might!”