none the less, Mme. Miller!" replied Chevalier, "I warn
you, there's a pack of idiots out in front. Would you believe it--they
shut me up!"

"That's no reason for walking in without knocking," replied Nanteuil
snappishly.

The doctor pointed out that Monsieur de Ligny had left the door open;
whereupon Nanteuil, turning to Ligny, said in a tone of tender reproach:

"Did you really leave the door open? But, when one comes into a room,
one closes the door on other people: it is one of the first things one
is taught."

She wrapped herself in a white blanket-cloak.

The call-boy summoned the players to the stage.

She grasped the hand which Ligny offered her, and, exploring his wrist
with her fingers, dug her nail into the spot, close to the veins, where
the skin is tender. Then she disappeared into the dark corridor.

CHAPTER II

Chevalier, having resumed his ordinary clothes, sat in a corner box,
beside Madame Doulce, gazing at Felicie, a small remote figure on the
stage. And remembering the days when he had held her in his arms, in his
attic in the Rue des Martyrs, he wept with grief and rage.

They had met last year at a fete given under the patronage of Lecureuil,
the deputy; a benefit performance given in aid of poor actors of the
ninth _arrondissement_. He had prowled around her, dumb, famishing, and
with blazing eyes. For a whole fortnight he had pursued her incessantly.
Cold and unmoved, she had appeared to ignore him. Then, suddenly, she
surrendered; so suddenly that when he left her that day, still radiant
and amazed, he had said a stupid thing. He had told her: "And I took you
for a little bit of china!" For three whole months he had tasted joys
acute as pain. Then Felicie had grown elusive, remote, and estranged.
She loved him no longer. He sought the reason, but could not discover
it. It tortured him to know that he was no longer loved; jealousy
tortured him still more. It was true that in the first beautiful hours
of his love he had known that Felicie had a lover, one Girmandel, a
court bailiff, who lived in the Rue de Provence, and he had felt it
deeply. But as he never saw him he had formed so confused and
ill-defined an idea of him that his jealousy lost itself in uncertainty.
Felicie assured him that she had never been more than passive in her
intercourse with Girmandel, that she had not even pretended to care for
him. He believed her, and this belief gave him the keenest satisfaction.