"You"ve won," she said, with her sad little mocking smile. "I didn"t think of you for a moment while I was ill. To be precise, I never thought of you until to-day. There"s nothing to be glum about, come.

When I am ill I don"t think of anybody. I only ask one thing of people; to be left alone in peace. I turn my face to the wall and wait: I want to be alone. I want to die alone, like a rat in a hole."

"And yet it is hard to suffer alone."

"I"m used to it. I have been unhappy for years. No one ever came to my a.s.sistance. Now it has become a habit.... Besides, it is better so. No one can do anything for you. A noise in the room, worrying attentions, hypocritical jeremiads.... No; I would rather die alone."

"You are very resigned!"

"Resigned? I don"t even know what the word means. No: I set my teeth and I hate the illness which makes me suffer."

He asked her if she had no one to see her, no one to look after her. She said that her comrades at the theater were kind enough,--idiots,--but obliging and compa.s.sionate (in a superficial sort of way).

"But I tell you, I don"t want to see them. I"m a surly sort of customer."

"I would put up with it," he said.

She looked at him pityingly:

"You, too! You"re going to talk like the rest?"

He said:

"Pardon, pardon.... Good Heavens! I"m becoming a Parisian! I am ashamed.... I swear that I didn"t even think what I was saying...."

He buried his face in the bedclothes. She laughed frankly, and gave him a tap on the head!

"Ah! that"s not Parisian! That"s something like! I know you again. Come, show your face. Don"t weep all over my bed."

"Do you forgive me?"

"I forgive you. But don"t do it again."

She talked to him a little more, asked him what he was doing, and was then tired, bored, and dismissed him.

He had arranged to go and see her again the following week. But just as he was setting out he received a telegram from her telling him not to come: she was having a bad day.--Then, the next day but one, she sent for him. He went, and found her convalescent, sitting by the window, with her feet up. It was early spring, with a sunny sky and the young buds on the trees. She was more gentle and affectionate than he had yet seen her. She told him that she could not see anybody the other day, and would have detested him as much as anybody else.

"And to-day?"

"To-day I feel young and fresh, and I feel fond of everything else about me that feels young and fresh--as you do."

"And yet I am neither very young nor very fresh."

"You will be both until the day of your death."

They talked about what he had been doing since their last meeting, and about the theater in which she was going to resume her work soon: and on that she told him what she thought of the theater, which disgusted her, while it held her in its grip.

She did not want him to come again, and promised to resume her visits to his flat. He told her the times when she would be least likely to disturb his work. They arranged a countersign. She was to knock at the door in a certain way, and he was to open or not as he felt inclined....

She did not go beyond bounds at first. But once, when she was going to a society At Home, where she was to recite, the idea of it bored her at the last moment: she stopped on the way and telephoned to say that she could not come, and she told her man to drive to Christophe"s. She only meant to say good-night to him as she pa.s.sed. But, as it turned out, she began to confide in him that night, and told him all her life from her childhood on.

A sad childhood! An accidental father whom she had never known. A mother who kept an ill-famed inn in a suburb of a town in the north of France: the carters used to go and drink there, use the proprietress, and bully her. One of them married her because she had some small savings: he used to beat her and get drunk. Francoise had an elder sister who was a servant in the inn: she was worked to death; the proprietor made her his mistress in the sight and knowledge of her mother; she was consumptive, and had died. Francoise had grown up amid scenes of violence and shameful things. She saw her mother and sister weep, suffer, accept, degrade themselves, and die. And desperately she made up her mind not to submit to it, and to escape from her infamous surroundings: she was a rebel by instinct: certain acts of injustice would set her beside herself: she used to scratch and bite when she was thrashed. Once she tried to hang herself. She did not succeed: she had hardly set about it than she was afraid lest she might succeed only too well; and, even while she was beginning to choke and desperately clutching at the rope and trying to loosen it with stiff fumbling fingers, there was writhing in her a furious desire to live. And since she could not escape by death,--(Christophe smiled sadly, remembering his own experiences,)--she swore that she would win, and be free, rich, and trample under foot all those who oppressed her. She had made it a vow in her lair one evening, when in the next room she could hear the oaths of the man, and the cries of her mother as he beat her, and her sister"s sobs. How utterly wretched she felt! And yet her vow had been some solace. She clenched her teeth and thought:

"I will crush the lot of you."

In that dark childhood there had been one ray of light:

One day, one of the little grubby boys with whom she used to lark in the gutter, the son of the stage-door keeper of the theater, got her in to the rehearsal, although it was strictly forbidden. They stole to the very back of the building in the darkness. She was gripped by the mystery of the stage, gleaming in the darkness, and by the magnificent and incomprehensible things that the actors were saying, and by the queenly bearing of the actress,--who was, in fact, playing a queen in a romantic melodrama. She was chilled by emotion: and at the same time her heart thumped.... "That--that is what I must be some day!" ... Oh! if she could ever be like that!...--When it was over she wanted at all costs to see the evening performance. She let her companion go out, and pretended to follow him: and then she turned back and hid herself in the theater: she cowered away under a seat, and stayed there for three hours without stirring, choked by the dust: and when the performance was about to begin and the audience was arriving, just as she was creeping out of her hiding-place, she had the mortification of being pounced on, ignominiously expelled amid jeers and laughter, and taken home, where she was whipped. She would have died that night had she not known now what she must do later on to master these people and avenge herself on them.

Her plan was made. She took a situation as a servant in the _Hotel et Cafe du Theatre_, where the actors put up. She could hardly read or write: and she had read nothing, for she had nothing to read. She wanted to learn, and applied herself to it with frantic energy. She used to steal books from the guests" rooms, and read them at night by moonlight or at dawn, so as not to use her candle. Thanks to the untidiness of the actors, her larcenies pa.s.sed unnoticed or else the owners put up with cursing and swearing. She used to restore their books when she had read them,--except one or two which had moved her too much for her to be able to part with them;--but she did not return them intact. She used to tear out the pages which had pleased her. When she took the books back, she used carefully to slip them under the bed or the furniture, so as to make the owners of them believe that they had never left the room. She used to glue her ears to the door to listen to the actors going over their parts. And when she was alone, sweeping the corridor, she would mimic their intonations in a whisper and gesticulate. When she was caught doing so she was laughed at and jeered at. She would say nothing, and boil with rage.--That sort of education might have gone on for a long time had she not on one occasion been imprudent enough to steal the script of a part from the room of an actor. The actor stamped and swore.

No one had been to his room except the servant: he accused her. She denied it boldly: he threatened to have her searched: she threw herself at his feet and confessed everything, even to her other pilferings and the pages she had torn out of the books: the whole boiling. He cursed and swore frightfully: but he was not so angry as he seemed. He asked why she had done it. When she told him that she wanted to become an actress he roared with laughter. He questioned her, and she recited whole pages which she had learned by heart: he was struck by it, and said:

"Look here, would you like me to give you lessons?"

She was in the highest heaven of delight, and kissed his hands.

"Ah!" she said to Christophe, "how I should have loved him!"

But at once he added:

"Only, my dear, you know you can"t have anything for nothing...."

She was chaste, and had always been scared and modest with those who had pursued her with their overtures. Her absolute chast.i.ty, her ardent need of purity, her disgust with things unclean and ign.o.ble loveless sensuality, had been with her always from her childhood on, as a result of the despair and nausea of the sad sights which she saw about her on all sides at home:--and they were with her still.... Ah! unhappy creature! She had borne much punishment!... What a mockery of Fate!...

"Then," asked Christophe, "you consented?"

"Ah!" she said, "I would have gone through fire to get out of it. He threatened to have me arrested as a thief. I had no choice.--That was how I was initiated into art--and life."

"The blackguard!" said Christophe.

"Yes, I hated him. But I have met so many men since that he does not seem to me to be one of the worst. He did at least keep his word. He taught me what he knew--(not much!)--of the actor"s trade. He got me into his company. At first I was everybody"s servant, I played little sc.r.a.ps of parts. Then one night, when the soubrette was ill, they risked giving me her part. I went on from that. They thought me impossible, grotesque, uncouth. I was ugly then. I remained ugly until I was decreed,--if not "divine" like the other Woman,--the highest, the ideal type of woman, ... "Woman." ... Idiots! As for my acting, it was thought extravagant and incorrect. The public did not like me. The other players used to make fun of me. I was kept on because I was useful in spite of everything, and was not expensive. Not only was I not expensive, but I paid! Ah! I paid for every step, every advance, rung by rung, with my suffering, with my body. Fellow-actors, the manager, the impresario, the impresario"s friends...."

She stopped: her face was very pale, her lips were pressed together, there was a hard stare in her eyes: no tears came, but it was plain to see that her soul was shedding tears of blood. In a flash she was living through the shameful past, and the consuming desire to conquer which had upheld her--a desire that burned the more with every fresh stain and degradation that she had had to endure. She would sometimes have been glad to die: but it would have been too abominable to succ.u.mb in the midst of humiliation and to go no farther. Better to take her life before--if so it must be--or after victory. But not when she had degraded herself and not enjoyed the price of it....

She said no more. Christophe was pacing up and down the room in anger: he was in a mood to slay these men who had made this woman suffer and besmirched her. Then he looked at her with the eyes of pity: and he stood near her and took her face in his hands and pressed it fondly, and said:

"Poor little woman!"

She made to thrust him away. He said:

"You must not be afraid of me. I love you."

Then the tears trickled down her pale cheeks. He knelt down by her and kissed--

"_La lunga man d"ogni bellezza piena_...."

--the long delicate hands on which two tears had fallen.

He sat down again, and she recovered herself and calmly went on with her story: