The curtain went up. I have often seen Marguerite at the theatre.
I never saw her pay the slightest attention to what was being
acted. As for me, the performance interested me equally little,
and I paid no attention to anything but her, though doing my
utmost to keep her from noticing it.

Presently I saw her glancing across at the person who was in the
opposite box; on looking, I saw a woman with whom I was quite
familiar. She had once been a kept woman, and had tried to go on
the stage, had failed, and, relying on her acquaintance with
fashionable people in Paris, had gone into business and taken a
milliner's shop. I saw in her a means of meeting with Marguerite,
and profited by a moment in which she looked my way to wave my
hand to her. As I expected, she beckoned to me to come to her
box.

Prudence Duvernoy (that was the milliner's auspicious name) was
one of those fat women of forty with whom one requires very
little diplomacy to make them understand what one wants to know,
especially when what one wants to know is as simple as what I had
to ask of her.

I took advantage of a moment when she was smiling across at
Marguerite to ask her, "Whom are you looking at?"

"Marguerite Gautier."

"You know her?"

"Yes, I am her milliner, and she is a neighbour of mine."