These words, which pleased me much, were to do double duty. They were
to recur. They were to be, by a fine stroke, the very last words of my
tale, their tranquillity striking a sharp ironic contrast with the
stress of what had just been narrated. I had, you see, advanced
further in the form of my tale than in the substance. But even the
form was as yet vague. What, exactly, was to happen after Mlle.
Ange'lique and M. Joumand (as I provisionally called him) had rushed
back past me into the casino? It was clear that I must hear the whole
inner history from the lips of one or the other of them. Which? Should
M. Joumand stagger out on to the terrace, sit down heavily at the
table next to mine, bury his head in his hands, and presently, in
broken words, blurt out to me all that might be of interest?... `"And
I tell you I gave up everything for her--everything." He stared at me
with his old hopeless eyes. "She is more than the fiend I have
described to you. Yet I swear to you, monsieur, that if I had anything
left to give, it should be hers."

`Down below, the sea rustled to and fro over the shingle.'

Or should the lady herself be my informant? For a while, I rather
leaned to this alternative. It was more exciting, it seemed to make
the writer more signally a man of the world. On the other hand, it was
less simple to manage. Wronged persons might be ever so communicative,
but I surmised that persons in the wrong were reticent. Mlle.
Ange'lique, therefore, would have to be modified by me in appearance
and behaviour, toned down, touched up; and poor M. Joumand must look
like a man of whom one could believe anything.... `She ceased
speaking. She gazed down at the fragments of her fan, and then, as
though finding in them an image of her own life, whispered, "To think
what I once was, monsieur!--what, but for him, I might be, even now!"