“Do you remember?” she replied, laughing and blushing at the same time. “No, I don’t feel them now. I turned Tournade out of my dressing-room, and pretty quickly, I can assure you. But do you know what pleases me most? I never see that ugly woman now; you remember, Madam de Bonnivet. She does not come to the theatre, and the other day Jacques ought to have dined with her, but he did not go. I am quite sure of that, for he wrote his letter of excuse in my presence. It was the evening Bressoré could not act: there was a change of bill and I was free for the evening. I wanted so badly to ask him if we could spend it together, but I did not dare. He suggested it himself, and now every day I have a fresh proof of his tenderness. He is coming for me presently to take me to lunch. Ah! how I love him, how I love him! How proud I am of loving him!” What answer could I make to such phrases, and what could I do but allow her to remain enraptured by this illusion as she was enraptured by the scent of the roses which she inhaled, closing as she did so her clear azure eyes—another note of blue in the harmony which I sought? What could I do but suffer in silence at the idea that this recrudescence of tenderness in the sensual and complex Molan was, without doubt, a trick. Some harshness on the other woman’s part was certainly the cause of it. Camille took for the marks of passionate ardour the fever of excitation into which Madam de Bonnivet had thrown Jacques without gratifying it. When a woman has, as the pretty actress so nicely put it, her twenty years of age and her youth to offer, she cannot guess that in her arms her lover is thinking of another woman, and exalting his senses by her image! That morning I kept silent as to what I knew. To make her laugh and keep myself from weeping, I told her the story of a real duchess of the eighteenth century, who wished to give her miniature to her lover before he took the field with the troops. She went to the painter with her eyes so fatigued by the tender folly of her good-bye that the painter declared he would not continue the portrait if she did not become more virtuous, for her beauty had changed so. “Ah!” the duchess said as she put her arms round her lover’s neck in the painter’s presence, “if that is the case, then life is too short to have one’s portrait painted.” “Ah! how true what he has just been saying is, Jacques!” Camille cried as she went to meet Jacques who came in at that moment. I can see her now leaning her loving head upon the knave’s shoulder, the latter being condescending, indulgent, almost tender, because I was there to assist at this foolish explosion of affection. This picture is a very good résumé of the first period which might be entitled: Camille happy!