the mirror, she continued to recite and act before the
glass.

"D'une humble reverence aussitot me salue."

Bending her knee, at first slightly, then lower, then, with her left leg
brought forward, and her right thrown, back, she curtsied deeply.

"Moi, pour ne point manquer a la civilite,
Je fis la reverence aussi de mon cote."

He called her more urgently. But she dropped a second curtsy, the pauses
of which she accentuated with amusing precision. And she went on
reciting and dropping curtsies at the places indicated by the text and
by the traditions of the stage.

"Soudain il me refait une autre reverence;
Moi, j'en refais de meme une autre en diligence;
Et lui, d'une troisieme aussitot repartant,
D'une troisieme aussi j'y repars a l'instant."

She executed every detail of stage business, seriously and
conscientiously, taking pains to give a perfect rendering. Her poses,
some of which were disconcerting, requiring as they did a skirt to
explain them, were almost all pretty, while all were interesting,
inasmuch as they brought into relief the firm muscles under the soft
envelope of a young body, and revealed at every movement correspondences
and harmonies which are not commonly observed.

When clothing her nudity with the propriety of her attitudes and the
ingenuousness of her expressions she was the incarnation, through mere
chance and caprice, of a gem of art, an allegory of Innocence in the
style of Allegrain or Clodion. And the great lines of the comedy rang
out with delicious purity from this animated figurine. Robert,
enthralled in spite of himself, suffered her to go on to the very end.
What entertained him above all was that the most public of all things, a
stage scene, should be presented to him in so private and secret a
fashion. And, while watching the ceremonious actions of this girl in all
her nudity, he was at the same time revelling in the philosophical
pleasure of discovering how dignity is produced in the best social
circles.

"Il passe, vient, repasse et toujours de plus belle
Me fait a chaque fois une reverence nouvelle,
Et moi qui tous ses tours fixement regardais,
Nouvelle reverence aussi je lui rendais...."

In the meantime she admired in the mirror her freshly-budded breasts,
her supple waist, her arms, a trifle slender, round and tapering, and
her smooth, beautiful knees; and, seeing all this subservient to the
fine art of comedy, she became animated and ex