She stopped for a moment, and mechanically moved the cinders in the fire with the tongs.
“I have read in books,” she said, “that actors feel nothing. And, indeed, those whom I meet are nearly all conceited, grown-up children who are never troubled by anything but petty questions of vanity. I do not know if it is they who are not true comedians, or myself. I fancy it must be I. In any case, I pay for the others.”
She stopped speaking. It was three in the morning. She got up to go. Christophe told her to wait until the morning before she went home, and proposed that she should go and lie down on his bed. She preferred to stay in the armchair by the dead fire, and went on talking quietly while all the house was still.
“You will be tired tomorrow.”
“I am used to it. But what about you? … What are you doing tomorrow?”
“I am free. I have a lesson to give about eleven. … Besides, I am strong.”
“All the more reason why you should sleep soundly.”
“Yes; I sleep like a log. Not even pain can stand out against it. I am sometimes furious with myself for sleeping so well. So many hours wasted! … I am delighted to be able to take my revenge on sleep for once in a way, and to cheat it of a night.”
They went on talking in low tones, with long intervals of silence. And Christophe went to sleep. Françoise smiled and supported his head to keep him from falling. … She sat by the window dreaming and looking down into the darkness of the garden, which presently was lit up. About seven o’clock she woke Christophe gently, and said goodbye.
In the course of the month she came at times when Christophe was out, and found the door shut. Christophe sent her a key to the flat, so that she could go there when she liked. She went more than once when Christophe was away, and she would leave a little bunch of violets on the table, or a few words scribbled on a sheet of paper, or a sketch, or a caricature—just to show that she had been.
And one evening, when she left the theater, she went to the flat to resume their pleasant talk. She found him at work, and they began to talk. But at the very outset they both felt that the friendly comfortable mood of the last occasion was gone. She tried to go: but it was too late. Not that Christophe did anything to prevent her. It was her own will that failed her and would not let her go. They stayed there with the gathering consciousness of the desire that was in them.
Following on that night she disappeared for some weeks. In him there had been roused a sensual ardor that had lain dormant for months before, and he could not live without her. She had forbidden him to go to her house: he went to see her at the theater. He sat far back, and he was aflame with love and devotion: every nerve in his body thrilled: the tragic intensity which she brought to her acting consumed him also in its fire. At last he wrote to her:
“My Dear,—Are you angry with me? Forgive me if I have hurt you.”
When she received his humble little note she hastened to him and flung herself into his arms.
“It would have been better to be just friends, good friends. But since it is impossible, it is no good holding out against the inevitable. Come what may!”
They lived together. They kept on in their separate flats, and each of them was free. Françoise could not have submitted to living openly with Christophe. Besides, her position would not allow it. She used to go to Christophe’s flat and spend part of the day and night with him; but she used to return to her own place every day and also sleep there.
During the vacation, when the theater was closed, they took a house together outside Paris, near Gif. They had many happy days there, though there were clouds of sadness too. They were days of confidence and work. They had a beautiful light room, high up, with a wide view over the fields. At night through the window they could see the strange shadows of the clouds floating across the clear, dull darkness of the sky. Half asleep, they could hear the joyous crickets chirping and the showers falling; the breath of the autumn earth—honeysuckle, clematis, glycine, and new-mown hay—filled the house and soothed their senses. The silence of the night. In the distance dogs barked. Cocks crowed. Dawn comes. The tinkling angelus rings in the distant belfry, through the cold, gray twilight, and they shiver in the warmth of their nest, and yet more lovingly hold each other close. The voices of the birds awake in the trellis on the wall. Christophe opens his eyes, holds his breath, and his heart melts as he looks down at the dear tired face of his sleeping beloved, pale with the paleness of love. …
Their love was no selfish
