g in very truth! The worldly old women who
foregathered in the ballet-dancer's little parlor, could not contain
their admiration for their "little girl's" success; and even grew
indignant at the father for not accepting things "as things had to be."
Salvatti? Just the support she needed! An expert pilot, who knew the
chart of the opera world, who would steer her straight and keep her off
the rocks.

The tenor had skilfully organized a world wide publicity for his young
singer. Leonora's beauty and her artistic verve conquered every public.
She had contracts with the leading theatres of Europe, and though
critics found defects in her singing, her beauty helped them to forget
these, and one and all they contributed loyally to the deification of
the young goddess. Salvatti, sheltering his old age under this prestige
which he so religiously fostered, was keeping in harness to the very
end, and taking leave of life under the protecting shadow of that woman,
the last to believe in him and tolerate his exploitation.

Applauded by select publics, courted in her dressing-room by celebrated
men and women, Leonora began to find Salvatti's tyranny unbearable. She
now saw him as he really was: miserly, petulant, spoiled by praise.
Every bit of her money that came into his hands disappeared, she knew
not where. Eager for revenge, though really answering the lure of the
elegant world she glimpsed in the distance but was not yet a part of,
she began to deceive Salvatti in passing adventures, taking a diabolical
pleasure in the deceit. But no; as she looked back on that part of her
life with the sober eye of experience, she understood that she had
really been the one deceived. Salvatti, she remembered, would always
retire at the opportune moment, facilitating her infidelities. She
understood now that the man had carefully prepared such adventures for
her with influential men whom he himself introduced to make certain
profits out of the meeting--profits that he never declared.

After three years of this sort of life, when Leonora had reached the
full splendor of her beauty, she chanced to become the favorite of
fashion for one whole summer at Nice. Parisian newspapers, in their
"society columns" referred, in veiled language, to the passion of an
aged king, a democratic monarch, who had left his throne, much as a
manufacturer of London or a stockbroker of Paris would leave his office,
for a vacation on the Blue Coast. This tall, robust