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AT THE BEGINNING.

She was in the box; he was far above in the gallery.

He looked down and across and saw her sitting there fair as a flower and
robed like a royal courtesan in flame and snow.

Like a red torch flamed the ruby in her hair. Her shoulders were framed
in her cloak, white as marble warmed with firelight. Her gloved hands
held an opera glass which also glowed with flashing light.

His face grew dark and stern. He looked down at his poor coat and around
at the motley gallery which reeked with the smell of tobacco and liquor.

Students were there--poor like himself, but with great music-loving,
hungry, ambitious souls. Men and women of refinement and indomitable
will sat side by side with drunken loafers who had chanced to stumble up
the stairway.

His eyes went back to her. So sweet and dainty was every thread on her
fair body. No smell of toil, nor touch of care, nor mark of weariness.
Her flesh was ivory, her eyes were jewels, her heart was as clean and
sweet as her eyes. She was perfectly clothed, protected, at ease.

No, not at ease. She seemed restless. Again and again she swept her
glass around the lower balcony.

The man in the gallery knew she was looking for him, and he took a
bitter delight in the distance between them. He waited, calm as a lion
in his power.

The man at her elbow talks on. She does not hear. She is still
looking--a little swifter, a little more anxiously--her red lips ready
to droop in disappointment.

The noise of feet, of falling seats, continues. Boys call shrilly.
Ushers dart hastily to and fro. The soft laughter and hum of talk come
up from below.

She has reached the second balcony. She sweeps it hurriedly. Her
companion raises his eyes to the same balcony and laughs as he speaks.
She colors a little, but smiles as she lifts her eyes to the third
balcony.

Suddenly the glass stops. The color surges up her neck, splashing her
cheeks with red. Her breath stops also for a moment, then returns quick
and strong.

Her smile settles into a curious contraction that is almost painful to
see. His unsmiling eyes are looking somberly, sternly, accusingly into
hers. They are charged with all the bitterness and hate and disappointed
ambition which social injustice and inequality had wrought into his
soul.

She shivered and dropped her glass. Shivered and drew her fleecy, pink
and pale-blue cloak closer about her bare neck.

Her face grew timid,