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Mme. de Sallus _in her drawing-room, seated in a corner by the fireplace. Enter_ Jacques de RANDOL _noiselessly; glances to see that no one is looking, and kisses_ Mme. de Sallus _quickly upon her hair. She starts; utters a faint cry, and turns upon him._
Well, they will doubtless think that _I_ don't count.
But I will not permit it. I must have you announced in future. It does not look well.
Perhaps they will even go so far as to announce your husband--
Forgive me. [_Sits_.] Are you waiting for anybody?
Yes--probably. You know that I always receive when I am at home.
I know that I always have the pleasure of seeing you for about five minutes--just enough time to ask you how you feel, and then some one else comes in--some one in love with you, of course,--who impatiently awaits my departure.
Well, what can I do? I am not your wife, so how can it be otherwise?
I would snatch you away for five or six months, far from this horrible town, and keep you all to myself.
Do you know that it is absolute torture to love a woman like you?
Because I covet you as the starving covet the food they see behind the glassy barriers of a restaurant.
I tell you it is true! A woman of the world belongs to the world; that is to say, to everyone except the man to whom she gives herself. He can see her with open doors for a quarter of an hour every three days--not oftener, because of servants. In exceptional cases, with a thousand precautions, with a thousand fears, with a thousand subterfuges, she visits him once or twice a month, perhaps, in a furnished room. Then she has just a quarter of an hour to give him, because she has just left Madame X in order to visit Madame Z, where she has told her coachman to take her. If he complains, she will not come again, because it is impossible for her to get rid of her coachman. So, you see, the coachman, and the footman, and Madame Z, and Madame X, and all the others, who visit her house as they would a museum,--a museum that never closes,--all the he's and all the she's who eat up her leisure minute by minute and second by second, to whom she owes her time as an employee owes his time to the State, simply because she belongs to the world--all these persons are like the transparent and impassable glass: they keep you from my love.