"You charge me with giving you only empty phrases. That is undeserved.
I said all that was possible, and I meant what I said. I could not
pledge myself to put you into anything without knowing what you are
capable of doing; but, if you retain my good will, I repeat that I will
attend your next performance."
"And then?" she queried.
"Then--if I think well of it--you shall have a good part."
"Lead?"
"Bigre! I cannot say that. A good part, in Paris!"
"It is a promise?"
"Emphatically--if I think well of your performance."
"Of my next--the very next part I play?"
"Of the very next part you play."
She paused, reflecting. The pause lasted so long that it began to seem
to my suspense as if none of us would ever speak again. I took a
cigarette, and offered the box, in silence, to de Lavardens. He shook
his head without turning it to me, his gaze was riveted on the woman.
"All right," she groaned, "I agree!"
"Ah! good girl!"
"All you require is that Captain de Lavardens shall no longer seek me
for his wife. Is that it?"
"That's it."
"Very well. I know what would repel him--it shall be done to-night.
But you, gentlemen, will have to make the opportunity for me; you will
have to bring him to my place--both of you. You can find some reason
for proposing it? Tonight at nine o'clock. He knows the address."
She moved weakly to the door.
De Lavardens took three strides and grasped her hands. "Mademoiselle,"
he stuttered, "I have no words to speak my gratitude. I am a father,
and I love my son, but--mon Dieu! if--if things had been different,
upon my soul, I should have been proud to call you my daughter-in-law!"
Oh, how she could bow, that woman--the eloquence of her ill-fed form!
"Au revoir, gentlemen," she said.
Phew! We dropped into chairs.
"Paul," he grunted at me, "we have been a pair of brutes!"
"I know it. But you feel much relieved?"
"I feel another man. What is she going to say to him? I wish it were
over. _I_ should find it devilish difficult to propose going to
see her, you know! It will have to be _your_ suggestion. And
supposing he won't take us?"
"He will take us right enough," I declared, "and rejoice at the chance.
Hourra! hourra! hourra!" I sprang up and clapped him on the back. "My
friend, if that woman had thrown herself away on Georges it might have
been a national calamity."
"What?" he roared, purpling.
"Oh, no slight to Georges! I think--I think--I am afraid to say what I
think, I am afraid to think it!" I paced the room, struggling to
control myself. "Only, once in a blue moon, Jules, there is a woman
born of the People with a gift that is a blessing, and a curse--and her
genius makes an epoch, and her name makes theatrical history. And if a
lover of the stage like me discovers such a woman, you stodgy old
soldier, and blazes her genius in his work, he feels like Cheops,
Chephrenus, and Asychis rearing the Pyramids for immortality!"