Mademoiselle laughed defiantly.

“He is a gentleman, then?”

“Yes.”

“Will he dislike me?”

“Perhaps I have used a wrong word.  It is more disdain than dislike.”

“Will he disdain me?”

M. Lorman replaced the papers in his pocket and looked with comic gravity at her, as if to judge the effect she would be likely to have on his friend.  Then, his eyes twinkling with mischief, he answered deliberately: 

“Yes.”

He took up his hat and stick and prepared to go.

“Eh bien,” she retorted, “that is a challenge.  You have found something to occupy me.  Adieu.  Take care that my room faces the cathedral.”

II.

Someone had gone out by the stage-door and the noise of the storm came in along the low passage.  The theatre was almost in darkness.  Only Monsieur Raoul and old Jacques Martin were there.  In the shadow, as he bent over his violin case, the younger man seemed tall and well-made; but when he stood up, though he was tall, his bent shoulders became apparent, and the light fell on a stern, pale face that seemed older than its thirty years.  He began to button his cloak around him.

“You might tell ma femme, Monsieur Raoul, that I shall be late.  I must prepare for to-morrow.”

The old man and his wife kept house for Raoul, who was a bachelor.

“Assuredly I will tell her.”  Then Raoul went away.

The rain had ceased, but the scream of the wind sounded again and again.  The thin, weather-beaten trees bent low, like reeds; and heavy clouds, suffused with moonlight, drove inland in rugged broken masses.

For a few moments Jacques lingered on; then he put out the lights, locked up, drew his coat closer round his spare body, and hurried across to the more cheerful shelter of the Cafe des Artistes.

In the Rue Louise the door of Raoul’s house opened directly into the kitchen.  Madame Martin was sitting patiently by the fire, knitting.  She rose and took the violin case and wiped the raindrops from its waterproof covering.  Then she hung up Raoul’s cloak.

“And Jacques, Monsieur?” she inquired.

“Jacques will be late.  He bade me tell you, Julie.”

“He is always late!”

“He has to prepare for Mademoiselle Elise, who comes to-morrow.”

Raoul went to his room, and in a few moments Julie carried his supper up to him there.  Then, with the assurance of an old servant, she stood a moment at the door, with her hands crossed before her.

“The new actress comes from Paris, Monsieur?”

“Yes.”

“It will be a good thing.”

“A very good thing—­for the Theatre Royal.”

“She will require a great salary.”

“Of course; but the proprietors will gain.  Everybody will want to see her.”

“She lodges at M. Lorman’s?”