peak to Marguerite again was a wish to make her see that I
was stronger than she.

How many ways does the heart take, how many reasons does it invent for
itself, in order to arrive at what it wants!

I could not remain in the corridor, and I returned to my place in the
stalls, looking hastily around to see what box she was in. She was in a
ground-floor box, quite alone. She had changed, as I have told you, and
no longer wore an indifferent smile on her lips. She had suffered; she
was still suffering. Though it was April, she was still wearing a winter
costume, all wrapped up in furs.

I gazed at her so fixedly that my eyes attracted hers. She looked at me
for a few seconds, put up her opera-glass to see me better, and seemed
to think she recognised me, without being quite sure who I was, for when
she put down her glasses, a smile, that charming, feminine salutation,
flitted across her lips, as if to answer the bow which she seemed to
expect; but I did not respond, so as to have an advantage over her, as
if I had forgotten, while she remembered. Supposing herself mistaken,
she looked away.

The curtain went up. I have often seen Marguerite at the theatre. I
never saw her pay the slightest attention to what was being acted. As
for me, the performance interested me equally little, and I paid no
attention to anything but her, though doing my utmost to keep her from
noticing it.

Presently I saw her glancing across at the person who was in the
opposite box; on looking, I saw a woman with whom I was quite familiar.
She had once been a kept woman, and had tried to go on the stage, had
failed, and, relying on her acquaintance with fashionable people in
Paris, had gone into business and taken a milliner's shop. I saw in her
a means of meeting with Marguerite, and profited by a moment in which
she looked my way to wave my hand to her. As I expected, she beckoned to
me to come to her box.

Prudence Duvernoy (that was the milliner's auspicious name) was one of
those fat women of forty with whom one requires very little diplomacy
to make them understand what one wants to know, especially when what one
wants to know is as simple as what I had to ask of her.

I took advantage of a moment when she was smiling across at Marguerite
to ask her, "Whom are you looking at?"

"Marguerite Gautier."

"You know her?"

"Yes, I am her milliner, and she is a neighbour of mine."

"Do you live in the Rue d'Antin?"

"No. 7. The window