ged with Adelaide were:

"Have you seen this opera before, Lady Le Marchant?"

"No; never."

It was Auber's merry little opera, "Des Teufels Antheil." The play was
played. Von Francius was beside me. Whenever I looked down I saw Eugen,
with the same calm, placid indifference upon his face; and again I felt
the old sensation of soreness, shame, and humiliation. I feel wrought
up to a great pitch of nervous excitement when we leave the theater and
drive to the Malkasten, where there is more music--dance music, and
where the ball is at its height. And in a few moments I find myself
whirling down the room in the arms of von Francius, to the music of
"Mein schoenster Tag in Baden," and wishing very earnestly that the
heart-sickness I feel would make me ill or faint, or anything that would
send me home to quietness and--him. But it does not have the desired
effect. I am in a fever; I am all too vividly conscious, and people tell
me how well I am looking, and that rosy cheeks become me better than
pale ones.

They are merry parties, these dances at the Malkasten, in the quaintly
decorated saal of the artists' club-house. There is a certain license in
the dress. Velvet coats, and coats, too, in many colors, green and prune
and claret, vying with black, are not tabooed. There are various
uniforms of hussars, infantry, and uhlans, and some of the women, too,
are dressed in a certain fantastically picturesque style to please their
artist brothers or _fiances_.

The dancing gets faster, and the festivities are kept up late. Songs are
sung which perhaps would not be heard in a quiet drawing-room; a little
acting is done with them. Music is played, and von Francius, in a
vagrant mood, sits down and improvises a fitful, stormy kind of
fantasia, which in itself and in his playing puts me much in mind of the
weird performances of the Abbate Liszt.

I at least hear another note than of yore, another touch. The soul that
it wanted seems gradually creeping into it. He tells a strange story
upon the quivering keys--it is becoming tragic, sad, pathetic. He says
hastily to me and in an under-tone: "Fraeulein May, this is a thought of
one of your own poets:

"'How sad, and mad, and bad it was,
And yet how it was sweet.'"

I am almost in tears, and every face is affording illustrations for "The
Expressions of the Emotions in Men and Women," when it suddenly breaks
off with a loud, Ha! ha! ha! which sounds as if it came from