action for me.

We had arrived in London at what is called "the height of the season."
Among the operatic attractions of that year--I am writing of the days
when the ballet was still a popular form of public entertainment--there
was a certain dancer whose grace and beauty were the objects of
universal admiration. I was asked if I had seen her, wherever I went,
until my social position, as the one man who was indifferent to the
reigning goddess of the stage, became quite unendurable. On the next
occasion when I was invited to take a seat in a friend's box, I accepted
the proposal; and (far from willingly) I went the way of the world--in
other words, I went to the opera.

The first part of the performance had concluded when we got to the
theater, and the ballet had not yet begun. My friends amused themselves
with looking for familiar faces in the boxes and stalls. I took a chair
in a corner and waited, with my mind far away from the theater, from the
dancing that was to come. The lady who sat nearest to me (like ladies
in general) disliked the neighborhood of a silent man. She determined to
make me talk to her.

"Do tell me, Mr. Germaine," she said. "Did you ever see a theater
anywhere so full as this theater is to-night?"

She handed me her opera-glass as she spoke. I moved to the front of the
box to look at the audience.

It was certainty a wonderful sight. Every available atom of space (as
I gradually raised the glass from the floor to the ceiling of the
building) appeared to be occupied. Looking upward and upward, my range
of view gradually reached the gallery. Even at that distance, the
excellent glass which had been put into my hands brought the faces of
the audience close to me. I looked first at the persons who occupied
the front row of seats in the gallery stalls.

Moving the opera-glass slowly along the semicircle formed by the seats,
I suddenly stopped when I reached the middle.

My heart gave a great leap as if it would bound out of my body. There
was no mistaking _that_ face among the commonplace faces near it. I had
discovered Mrs. Van Brandt!

She sat in front--but not alone. There was a man in the stall
immediately behind her, who bent over her and spoke to her from time to
time. She listened to him, so far as I could see, with something of a
sad and weary look. Who was the man? I might, or might not, find that
out. Under any circumstances, I determined to speak to Mrs. Van Brandt.

The curtain