without moving a
muscle; coolly, criticisingly and very fastidiously. The _blase_-looking
individual in the foreground received, I saw, a share of his
attention--the artist, too, in the background; the model, with the white
dress, oriental fan, bare arms, and half-bored, half-cynic look. He
looked at them all long--attentively--then turned away; the only token
of approval or disapproval which he vouchsafed being a slight smile and
a slight shrug, both so very slight as to be almost imperceptible. Then
he passed on--glanced at some other pictures--at my sister, on whom his
eyes dwelt for a moment as if he thought that she at least made a very
beautiful picture; then out of the room.

"Do you know him?" said von Francius, quite softly, to me.

I started violently. I had utterly forgotten that he was at my side, and
I know not what tales my face had been telling. I turned to find the
dark and impenetrable eyes of von Francius fixed on me.

"A little," I said.

"Then you know a generous, high-minded man--a man who has made me feel
ashamed of myself--and a man to whom I made an apology the other day
with pleasure."

My heart warmed. This praise of Eugen by a man whom I admired so
devotedly as I did Max von Francius seemed to put me right with myself
and the world.

Soon afterward we left the exhibition, and while the others went away it
appeared somehow by the merest casualty that von Francius was asked to
drive back with us and have afternoon tea, _englischerweise_--which he
did, after a moment's hesitation.

After tea he left for an orchestra probe to the next Saturday's concert;
but with an _auf wiedersehen_, for the probe will not last long, and we
shall meet again at the opera and later at the Malkasten Ball.

I enjoyed going to the theater. I knew my dress was pretty. I knew that
I looked nice, and that people would look at me, and that I, too, should
have my share of admiration and compliments as a _schoene Englaenderin_.

We were twenty minutes late--naturally. All the people in the place
stare at us and whisper about us, partly because we have a conspicuous
place--the proscenium loge to the right of the stage, partly because we
are in full toilet--an almost unprecedented circumstance in that homely
theater--partly, I suppose, because Adelaide is supremely beautiful.

Mr. Arkwright was already with us. Von Francius joined us after the
first act, and remained until the end. Almost the only words he
exchan