Madame Martin remembered Jeanne Tancrede; not very pretty, but graceful with a certain slowness of action in playing romantic roles.

“They lived almost together in a little house at Auteuil,” Paul Vence continued.  “I often called on them.  I found him lost in his dreams, forgetting to model a figure drying under its cloths, alone with himself, pursuing his idea, absolutely incapable of listening to anybody; she, studying her roles, her complexion burned by rouge, her eyes tender, pretty because of her intelligence and her activity.  She complained to me that he was inattentive, cross, and unreasonable.  She loved him and deceived him only to obtain roles.  And when she deceived him, it was done on the spur of the moment.  Afterward she never thought of it.  A typical woman!  But she was imprudent; she smiled upon Joseph Springer in the hope that he would make her a member of the Comedie Francaise.  Dechartre left her.  Now she finds it more practical to live with her managers, and Jacques finds it more agreeable to travel.”

“Does he regret her?”

“How can one know the things that agitate a mind anxious and mobile, selfish and passionate, desirous to surrender itself, prompt in disengaging itself, liking itself most of all among the beautiful things that it finds in the world?”

Brusquely she changed the subject.

“And your novel, Monsieur Vence?”

“I have reached the last chapter, Madame.  My little workingman has been guillotined.  He died with that indifference of virgins without desire, who never have felt on their lips the warm taste of life.  The journals and the public approve the act of justice which has just been accomplished.  But in another garret, another workingman, sober, sad, and a chemist, swears to himself that he will commit an expiatory murder.”

He rose and said good-night.

She called him back.

“Monsieur Vence, you know that I was serious.  Bring Choulette to me.”

When she went up to her room, her husband was waiting for her, in his red-brown plush robe, with a sort of doge’s cap framing his pale and hollow face.  He had an air of gravity.  Behind him, by the open door of his workroom, appeared under the lamp a mass of documents bound in blue, a collection of the annual budgets.  Before she could reach her room he motioned that he wished to speak to her.

“My dear, I can not understand you.  You are very inconsequential.  It does you a great deal of harm.  You intend to leave your home without any reason, without even a pretext.  And you wish to run through Europe with whom?  With a Bohemian, a drunkard—­that man Choulette.”

She replied that she should travel with Madame Marmet, in which there could be nothing objectionable.

“But you announce your going to everybody, yet you do not even know whether Madame Marmet can accompany you.”

“Oh, Madame Marmet will soon pack her boxes.  Nothing keeps her in Paris except her dog.  She will leave it to you; you may take care of it.”