and away on an
important affair.

* * * * *

Nekhludoff would have left the same evening but for his promise to
Mariette to visit her at the theatre. Though he knew that it was wrong
to do it, he went there, contrary to the dictates of his own
conscience, considering himself bound to keep his word. Besides his
wish to see Mariette again, he also wished, as he thought, to measure
himself against that world lately so near, but now so strange to him.

"Could I withstand these temptations?" he thought, but not with entire
sincerity. "I will try it for the last time."

Attired in a dress-coat, he arrived in the theatre where the eternal
"Dame aux Camelias" was being played. A French actress was showing in
a novel way how consumptive women die.

Nekhludoff was shown to the box occupied by Mariette. In the corridor
a liveried servant bowed and opened the door for him.

All the spectators in the circle of boxes--sitting and standing,
gray-haired, bald and pomaded heads--were intently following the
movements of a slim actress making wry faces and in an unnatural voice
reading a monologue. Some one hissed when the door was opened, and
two streams of cold and warm air were wafted on Nekhludoff's face.

In the box he found Mariette and a strange lady with a red mantle over
her shoulders and high head-dress, and two men--a general, Mariette's
husband, a handsome, tall man with a high, artificial, military
breast, and a flaxen haired, bald-headed man with shaved chin and
solemn side-whiskers. Mariette, graceful, slim, elegant, decolette,
with her strong, muscular shoulders sloping down from the neck, at the
jointure of which was a darkening little mole, immediately turned
around, and, pointing with her fan to a chair behind her, greeted him
with a welcome, grateful, and, as it seemed to Nekhludoff, significant
smile. Her husband calmly, as was his wont, looked at Nekhludoff and
bowed his head. In the glance which he exchanged with his wife, as in
everything else, he looked the master, the owner, of a beautiful
woman.

There was a thunder of applause when the monologue ended. Mariette
rose, and, holding in one hand her rustling silk skirt, walked to the
rear of the box and introduced Nekhludoff to her husband. The general
incessantly smiled with his eyes, said he was glad, and remained calm
and mute.

"I had to leave to-day, but I promised you," said Nekhludoff, turning
to Mariette.

"If y