ANNETTE. No. I knew where Jacques was dining—at a restaurant—a farewell party. His parents were having dinner at the station. I went to the restaurant and asked for him, like a girl off the streets. I could hear his friends laughing and joking from where I was, when the waiter took my message. LUCIE. Did he come? ANNETTE. Yes. He told me afterwards he thought it was some woman from a café chantant who sent for him. Oh! MADELEINE. And when he saw that it was you? ANNETTE. He took me into the street, so that I shouldn’t be recognized. That’s where we had our talk. The passers-by laughed and made horrible jokes. MADELEINE. And then you told him? ANNETTE. Yes. LUCIE. Well? ANNETTE. You couldn’t guess what he answered: that it wasn’t true. LUCIE. Oh! ANNETTE [_still tearlessly_] Then he lost his temper and said he saw through my game; that I wanted to force him to marry me because he was rich. Much he spared me! I tried to put my arms round him: he threatened to call the police. Then I cried, I implored him—I asked him to come with me tomorrow to a doctor to prove I wasn’t lying. He answered quite coldly that, even if it was true, there was nothing to prove that it was him. Ah, you can’t believe it, can you? It’s too much! I couldn’t have, unless I had heard it with my own ears; and how I could without dying I don’t know. You don’t know what depths of shame and cowardice I sunk to. Then he looked at his watch, saying he only had time to catch the train. He said good bye and dashed off to the station. I had to half run to keep up, crying, and begging him not to desert me—for the sake of his child, of my happiness, my love, my very life! Horrible! Horrible! Loathsome! And how ridiculous! I had him by the arm. I couldn’t believe _that_ was the end. At the entrance to the station he said, brutally: ‘Let me go, will you?’ I said: ‘You shan’t go.’ Then he rushed to the train and got into the carriage, nearly crushing my fingers in the door, and hid behind his mother; and she threatened, too, to have me arrested. Gabrielle sat there, looking white, and pretending not to notice and not to know me. Catherine’s told you the rest. _A silence._ LUCIE. You must swear, Annette, never to think again of suicide. ANNETTE. I couldn’t swear sincerely. MADELEINE. You must be brave, now that you know what life is, brutally as it has been revealed to you. Almost all the women you think happy have gone through an inner catastrophe. They make themselves forget it because their very tears give out. Suffering is reticent, and they conceal theirs. But there are few women whose lives have not been broken, few who don’t carry within them the corpse of the woman they would have wished to be. ANNETTE. You say that to console me. I don’t believe it. MADELEINE. It’s the truth; and I’ve learnt it by experience. ANNETTE. I’m tired of life. I feel as if I were a hundred. LUCIE. Keep up your heart. We won’t desert you.