"Oh!" answered Hubert, "I never dreamed of such a ridiculous blasphemy. Just as saints and less lofty souls, endowed with good will, take for example the human career of Jesus, and console themselves for their merited sufferings by thinking of the unmerited injuries of Christ, so it is permitted us to assuage the feeling of our disappointments by similar meditations. Would you have us take for themes of prayer the life of Socrates, who died unknown to the Greeks? Would you have us take Spinoza? He was a polisher of spectacle glasses, a drinker of milk, and he died of starvation, not of penury, because his mind was distracted and he forgot to nourish himself, having other things to do." Sixtine was confounded with astonishment that he should give her such barren talk after their mutual esthetic and sentimental emotions. She attempted to reascend to the source to see if, this time, the craft would not take another branch of the stream. She spoke of the acting, which she found perfect. "Alas!" said Hubert. "Ignorance, sometimes, resembles genius among actors. Whoever is ignorant and yet must get out of a difficulty, invents badly or well, has recourse to personal souvenirs, to intuitive gestures. No, those we heard are perfect: they know all they have learned. Especially, nothing unforeseen: the foot goes like this, the hand like that, etc." "At least," said Sixtine, "they pronounce well and speak clearly." "It is proper, but without conviction. What woman, besides, outside of two or three select creatures...." "I," thought Sixtine, "I, for example." "... Could take this rôle royally enough to make one feel that it is not a rôle? Oh! the public is not exacting. The women come here to distract themselves, the men because it gives them ideas after a good dinner. Pathetic things to the former, cantharides to the latter. If they followed their inclinations most women would go to the Eden and most men to the Ambigu." "I owe you," said Sixtine, "a very noble pleasure and I am grateful. We are at my door." Hubert, recognizing the door, had a vision of lost time; he uttered a word which atoned somewhat for his awkward digressions: "Already!" "If it were not so late, I should have offered you a cup of tea, ten minutes by the fire-place which awaits me, but really...." "Oh! I entreat you!" "It is because ... no, it is not possible." "In that case, you should not have made me think of it," said Hubert in a tone of chagrin. "You had not thought of it? Then, go back to the very place where you did not think of it, and you will return in peace." "Five minutes, only five minutes!" "Be sensible, I will look for you to-morrow." "Only as far as your door!" "For what reason, then? Come, ring for me, if you please." He obeyed. The door opened, she offered him her hand, then slowly, with movements of weariness or regret, she crossed the threshold. Still more slowly she pushed the door behind her, pausing twice before closing it.