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"But!" said he gayly, "to fall from power is nothing, provided one falls into the arms of ballet-girls." Molina burst out laughing ... when he ran his eye over the list and found accompanying the names of ballet-dancers and members of the chorus, the distinguished particles of some habitués. Madame Marsy was awaiting Guy de Lissac's return from the greenroom.
He made her sit down, seized both her hands, and looked at her earnestly as he said: "Swear to me that you have never been Lissac's mistress!" She did not even quiver, but was as calm as if she had long awaited this question. She boldly met José's glance and said: "Does one ask such a question of the woman one loves?"
"Am I imprudent?" further asked Guy. "No, but who has told you ?" "Nothing, your Prefect of Police only spoke a little too loud. He seemed to me to understand." Vaudrey's hand rapidly seized Lissac's wrist. "Hush! be silent!" "Very well! Good!" said Lissac to himself. "Poor little Adrienne." "I will tell you all about that later. Oh! nothing is more simple! It isn't what you think!"
"They do not tire me, they upset me," Adrienne replied. "Ah! they are in full go, as it is called. An express train. But they amuse themselves so much that they have not even time to smile. When the locomotive spins along too rapidly, try to distinguish the scenery!" Adrienne instinctively felt that under his irony this sceptic disguised a sort of sincerity. Lissac's wit pleased her.
He did not notice that a gentleman with a closely buttoned frock-coat, on seeing him, quietly rose from the divan on which he had been sitting, and approached him, mechanically pulling the skirts of his coat meanwhile, so as to smooth the creases. He simply touched Monsieur de Lissac's shoulder with the tip of his finger. Guy turned round, expecting to recognize a friend.
He lightly touched Lissac's buttonhole with the end of his finger, as if to intimate that there was the explanation of his arrest, and Guy suddenly became very red and stamped his foot. "Idiot that I am! I am at your orders, monsieur," he said, making a sign to the Commissioner to pass out.
"Ah!" said José again, without adding a word. Marianne was satisfied. She knew now that the duke still loved her, since the mention of Lissac's name had made him tremble. Well! she had shrewdly understood her Rosas. "And what have you been doing, my dear duke, for such an age?" she said.
"The romance of my life," whispered Lissac in Marianne's ear. "The more reason that it should not be read again. It is true there are books one never reads but once. And for that reason, probably, one never forgets them." She rose abruptly, threw the stump of her cigarette into the fire and looked with a bright, penetrating glance, into Lissac's surprised eyes.
She looked at him for some time as if she hesitated and feared, her glance penetrating Lissac's, and begging with a tearful petition that wished to kindle a flame in his eyes. "What I have to say to you will take some time. I am afraid " "Of what?" he asked. "I don't know. You are in a hurry? I interfere with you, perhaps!" "Not the least in the world.
"Oh, that is not nearly so interesting," said she. And she went back to the sofa from which she had risen. It was a wonderful room, all silk and velvet and shiny things, and I felt inclined to go back to give my boots another rub. As Edie sat down again, I saw that she was all in black, and so I knew that she had heard of de Lissac's death.
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