“Listen, for the last time, I swear to you it doesn’t matter what you do—in a week you’ll be giving anything to get me back—I shan’t come; it’s a clean cut, do you hear, it’s irrevocable; you will be sorry one day, when it’s too late.” Perhaps he was sincere in saying this, and the torture of leaving his mistress may have seemed to him less cruel than that of remaining with her in certain circumstances. “But, my dear boy,” he went on, to me, “you oughtn’t to stand about here, I tell you, it will make you cough.” I pointed to the scenery which barred my way. He touched his hat and said to one of the journalists: “Would you mind, sir, throwing away your cigar; the smoke is bad for my friend.” His mistress had not waited for him to accompany her; on her way to her dressing-room she turned round and: “Do they do those tricks with women too, those nice little hands?” she flung to the dancer from the back of the stage, in an artificially melodious tone of girlish innocence. “You look just like one yourself, I’m sure I could have a wonderful time with you and a girl I know.” “There’s no rule against smoking that I know of; if people aren’t well, they have only to stay at home,” said the journalist. The dancer smiled mysteriously back at the actress. “Oh! Do stop! You’ll make me quite mad,” she cried to him. “Then there will be trouble.” “In any case, sir, you are not very civil,” observed Saint-Loup to the journalist, still with a courteous suavity, in the deliberate manner of a man judging retrospectively the rights and wrongs of an incident that is already closed. At that moment I saw Saint-Loup raise his arm vertically above his head as if he had been making a signal to some one whom I could not see, or like the conductor of an orchestra, and indeed—without any greater transition than when, at a simple wave of the baton, in a symphony or a ballet, violent rhythms succeed a graceful andante—after the courteous words that he had just uttered he brought down his hand with a resounding smack upon the journalist’s cheek.