They asked one another twenty things at a time, and their questions intermingled.
"Were you wretched, Robert, when you were away from me?"
"So you are making your debut at the Comedie?
"Is The Hague a pretty place?"
"Yes, a quiet little town. Red, grey, yellow houses, with stepped gables, green shutters, and geraniums at the windows."
"What did you do there?"
"Not much. I walked round the Vijver."
"You did not go with women, I should hope?"
"No, upon my word. How pretty you are, my darling! Are you well again now?"
"Yes, I am cured."
And in sudden entreaty she said:
"Robert, I love you. Do not leave me. If you were to leave me I know for certain I could never take another lover. And what would become of me?
You know that I can"t do without love."
He replied brusquely, in a harsh voice, that he loved her only too well, that he thought of nothing but of her.
"I"m going crazy with it."
His harshness delighted and rea.s.sured her better than the nerveless tenderness of oaths and promises could have done. She smiled and began to undress herself generously.
"When do you make your debut at the Comedie?"
"This very month."
She opened her little bag, and took from it, together with her face-powder, her call for the rehearsal, which she held out to Robert.
It was a source of unending delight to her to gaze admiringly at this doc.u.ment, because it bore the heading of the Comedie, with the remote and awe-inspiring date of its foundation.
"You see, I make my debut as Agnes in _L"ecole des Femmes_."
"It"s a fine part."
"I believe you."
And, while she was undressing, the lines surged to her lips, and she whispered them:
"Moi, j"ai blesse quelqu"un? fis-je tout etonnee Oui, dit-elle, blesse; mais blesse tout de bon; Et c"est l"homme qu"hier vous vites au balcon Las! qui pourrait, lui dis-je, en avoir ete cause?
Sur lui, sans y penser, fis-je choir quelque chose?"
"You see, I have not grown thin."
"Non, dit-elle, vos yeux ont fait ce coup fatal, Et c"est de leurs regards qu"est venu tout son mal."
"If anything, I am a little plumper, but not too much."
"He, mon Dieu! ma surprise est, fis-je, sans seconde; Mes yeux ont-ils du mal pour en donner au monde?"
He listened to the lines with pleasure. If on the one hand he did not know much more of the literature of bygone days or of French tradition than his youthful contemporaries, he had more taste and more lively interests. And, like all Frenchmen, he loved Moliere, understood him, and felt him profoundly.
"It"s delightful," he said. "Now, come to me."
She let her chemise slip downwards with a calm and beneficent grace.
But, because she wished to make herself desired, and because she loved comedy, she began Agnes" narrative:
"J"etais sur le balcon a travailler au frais, Lorsque je vis pa.s.ser sous les arbres d"aupres Un jeune homme bien fait qui, rencontrant ma vue...."
He called her, and drew her to him. She glided from his arms, and, advancing toward the mirror, she continued to recite and act before the gla.s.s.
"D"une humble reverence aussitot me salue."
Bending her knee, at first slightly, then lower, then, with her left leg brought forward, and her right thrown, back, she curtsied deeply.
"Moi, pour ne point manquer a la civilite, Je fis la reverence aussi de mon cote."
He called her more urgently. But she dropped a second curtsy, the pauses of which she accentuated with amusing precision. And she went on reciting and dropping curtsies at the places indicated by the text and by the traditions of the stage.
"Soudain il me refait une autre reverence; Moi, j"en refais de meme une autre en diligence; Et lui, d"une troisieme aussitot repartant, D"une troisieme aussi j"y repars a l"instant."
She executed every detail of stage business, seriously and conscientiously, taking pains to give a perfect rendering. Her poses, some of which were disconcerting, requiring as they did a skirt to explain them, were almost all pretty, while all were interesting, inasmuch as they brought into relief the firm muscles under the soft envelope of a young body, and revealed at every movement correspondences and harmonies which are not commonly observed.
When clothing her nudity with the propriety of her att.i.tudes and the ingenuousness of her expressions she was the incarnation, through mere chance and caprice, of a gem of art, an allegory of Innocence in the style of Allegrain or Clodion. And the great lines of the comedy rang out with delicious purity from this animated figurine. Robert, enthralled in spite of himself, suffered her to go on to the very end.
What entertained him above all was that the most public of all things, a stage scene, should be presented to him in so private and secret a fashion. And, while watching the ceremonious actions of this girl in all her nudity, he was at the same time revelling in the philosophical pleasure of discovering how dignity is produced in the best social circles.
"Il pa.s.se, vient, repa.s.se et toujours de plus belle Me fait a chaque fois une reverence nouvelle, Et moi qui tous ses tours fixement regardais, Nouvelle reverence aussi je lui rendais...."
In the meantime she admired in the mirror her freshly-budded b.r.e.a.s.t.s, her supple waist, her arms, a trifle slender, round and tapering, and her smooth, beautiful knees; and, seeing all this subservient to the fine art of comedy, she became animated and exalted; a slight flush, like rouge, tinted her cheeks.
"Tant que si sur ce point la nuit ne fut venue, Toujours comme cela je me serais tenue, Ne voulaut point ceder, ni recevoir l"ennui Qu"il me put estimer moins civile que lui...."
He called to her from the bed, where he was lying on his elbow.
"Now come!"
Whereupon, full of animation and with heightened colour, she exclaimed:
"Don"t you think that I, too, love you!"
She flung herself beside her lover. Supple and wholly surrendered, she threw back her head, offering to his kisses her eyes veiled with shadowy lashes and her half-parted lips, from which gleamed a moist flash of white.