“I told you that he was Queen Anne’s platonic lover, and you observed it yourself; he is platonic, and as jealous as if he had the right to be so. Consequently he detests me. He goes still further and watches me. The idea has occurred to him to join hands with Camille. He had the audacity to ask me, in an off-hand way, to introduce him, and four or five times afterwards I found him in her dressing-room. Has she not mentioned it to you? No. He is quite likely to have told her, before last evening, as if by accident, that Bonnivet was leaving Paris with the sole object of letting her loose at me and of putting a spoke in the wheel of the carriage in which Queen Anne has at last consented to ride. Do not be too scandalized, we have only got as far as the carriage. There is no question, too, between us of what some women of the world call so quaintly, 'the little crime.’ But it is a quarter past ten and I must go. Drop me a line this afternoon.” “What about this morning’s four pages?” I asked as I accompanied him to the door. “I have given myself a holiday,” he replied; “my two-act comedy is finished, and if I bring off this coup I shall give myself quite ten days’ holiday. What do you think of my luck? How fortunate that this adventure with Queen Anne should have happened this month, between two periods of work?” This audacious person was quite right to talk of his luck. Had he been a moment later in going out he would have met his poor mistress on my staircase. Camille, who was usually a little later than half-past ten in arriving, was this morning early. The old Breton clock, to whose monotonous voice I had so long listened in my studio like a constant and never-heeded warning not to waste work-time in reverie, made the time twenty-five minutes past ten. When the charming girl appeared I could see at a glance that she was again experiencing an acute crisis of sorrow. Insomnia had encircled her eyes with bluish rings. Fever had cracked and dried up her lips, which were generally so fresh, young and full. A sombre flame burned in the depths of her eyes. Insomnia had made her cheeks livid, and with her fingers she was mechanically twisting a little cambric handkerchief with red flowers on it from which her teeth had torn all shape. I had before me the living image of jealousy and despair. What a contrast with the victorious smile I had just seen hovering around the lips and in the eyes of the man who had caused that pain and thought as much of it as of his first article! I realized once more that morning how easily pity leads to lies. The unhappy creature had hardly taken off her hat and cloak before I began to chide her in our usual friendly joking tone.