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156 THE CONFESSION OF A FOOL
all of a sudden our plans were changed. Marie’s mother
remembered a friend, an artist, a very wealthy woman
with a fine estate, and, what was of greater importance
still, closely in touch with one of our leading actors whose
wife was the rival and sworn enemy of the great tragedi-
enne, Marie’s former friend.
The artist, a spinster, vouched for the high moral
standard of this couple, and they expressed themselves
ready to undertake the guidance and supervision of
Marie’s studies until her first appearance in public. Marie
was invited to stay for a fortnight with her mother’s
friend to discuss the matter. There she was to meet the
great actor and his wife who, to fill her cup of happiness,
had used their influence with the manager of the theatre
on her behalf with very satisfactory results. His former
reported refusal was thereby entirely contradicted, and
turned out to have been a fabrication of her mother’s,
invented for the sole purpose of keeping her daughter
off the stage.
Marie’s future appeared to be safe. I could breathe
freely, sleep undisturbed, work.
She stayed away for a fortnight. To judge from her
scantj^ letters she was anything but dull. Her new
friends, to whom slie had given proofs of her talent, had
told her that she would do well on the stage.
On lier return she engaged rooms in a farmhouse and
arranged Avith the farmer’s wife to board her. She was
free of her warders now, and we could spend unchaperoned
week-ends together. Life was smiling at us, a little sadly,
it is true, for a certain melancholy, the effect of her
divorce, always remained. But in the country the burden
of convention weighs less heavily than in town, and the
summer sun soon dispelled the gloom which hung over
our lives.
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