is being rehearsed this
afternoon. Constantin Marc ought to be at the theatre already. There's
another queer fellow for you! He boasts that when he's in the Vivarais
he ruins all the women. And yet he is so shy that he daren't even talk
to Fagette and Falempin. I frighten him. It amuses me."

She was so tired that she had not the courage to rise.

"Isn't it queer? They are saying everywhere that I'm engaged for the
Francais, it's not true. There's not even a question of it. Of course, I
can't remain indefinitely where I am. In the long run one would get
besotted there. But there is no hurry. I have a great part to create in
_La Grille_. We shall see after that. What I want is to play comedy. I
don't want to join the Francais and then to do nothing."

Suddenly, gazing in front of her with eyes full of terror, she flung
herself backwards, turned pale, and uttered a shrill scream. Then her
eyelids fluttered, and she murmured that she could not breathe.

Robert loosened her jacket, and moistened her temples with a little
water.

She spoke.

"A priest! I saw a priest. He was in his surplice. His lips were moving,
but no sound came from them. He looked at me."

He tried to comfort her.

"Come now, my darling, how can you suppose that a priest, a priest in
his surplice, would show himself in a restaurant?"

She listened obediently, and allowed herself to be persuaded.

"You are right, you are right, I know it well enough."

In that little head of hers illusions were soon dispelled. She was born
two hundred and thirty years after the death of Descartes, of whom she
had never heard; yet, as Dr. Socrates would have said, he had taught her
the use of reason.

Robert met her at six o'clock after the rehearsal, under the arcades of
the Odeon, and drove away with her in a cab.

"Where are we going?" she inquired.

He hesitated a little.

"You would not care to go back to our house out there?"

She cried out at the suggestion.

"Oh no! I couldn't! Oh, heavens, never!"

He replied that he had thought as much; that he would try to find
something else: a little ground-floor flat in Paris; that in the
meantime, just for to-day, they would content themselves with a chance
abode.

She gazed at him with fixed, heavy eyes, drew him violently towards her,
scorching his neck and ear with the breath of her desire. Then her arms
fell away from him, and she sank back beside him, dejected and relaxed.

When the cab stoppe