exhibiting
marionettes! It's a wonder he does not ask me to put a little paper hat
on every finger. Subtle, intellectual, isn't it?"

Then, lifting her hair and uncovering her animated features, she said:

"I'll show you how I do it."

Suddenly transfigured, seeming of greater stature, she spoke the words
with an air of ingenuous dignity and serene innocence:

"No, sir, I do not fear you. Why should I fear you? You thought to
ensnare me, and you have placed yourself at my mercy. You are a man of
honour. Now that I am under the shelter of your roof, you shall tell me
what you told Chevalier d'Amberre, your enemy, when he entered that
gate. You shall tell me: 'You are in your own house; I am yours to
command.'"

She had the mysterious gift of changing her soul and her very face.
Ligny was under the spell of this beautiful illusion.

"You are marvellous!"

"Listen, pussy-cat. I shall wear a big lawn bonnet with lappets, one
above the other, on either side of my face. You see, in the play I am a
young girl of the Revolution. And it is imperative that I should make
people feel it. I must have the Revolution _in_ me, do you understand?"

"Are you well up in the Revolution?"

"Of course I am! I don't know the dates, to be sure. But I have the
feeling of the period. For me, the Revolution means a bosom swelling
with pride under a crossed neckerchief, knees enjoying full freedom in a
striped petticoat, and a tiny blaze of colour on the cheek-bones. There
you have it!"

He asked her questions about the play, and he realized that she knew
nothing about it. She, did not need to know anything about it. She
divined, she found by instinct all that she needed from it.

"At rehearsals, I never give them a hint as to any of my effects, I keep
them all for the public. It will make Romilly tear his hair. How stupid
they'll all look! Fagette, my dear, will make herself ill over it."

She sat down on a little rickety chair. Her forehead, but a moment
before as white as marble, was rosy; she had once more assumed her
cheeky flapper's expression.

He drew near to her, gazed into the fascinating grey of her eyes, and,
as on the evening before, when he sat in front of his coke-fire, he
reflected that she was untruthful and cowardly, and ill-natured toward
her friends; but now the thought was tempered with indulgence. He
reflected that she had love-affairs with actors of the lowest type, or
that she at least made shift with them;