not receiving salutations and bows, as formerly. He felt
that he was becoming a waif. Bah! he consoled himself with the thought
that the human race is thus constructed: everything is in success, he
gets most who offers most. Why then trouble about it?

His eyes followed the movement of his glass and one after another he saw
Madame Marsy, Jouvenet, Madame Gerson, so many living and exceedingly
taunting recollections, when suddenly Sulpice trembled, shaken by a
keener and almost angry feeling as his glance was directed to a box
against the dark-red of which two faces were boldly outlined: those of
Rosas and Marianne.

He was excited and unpleasantly piqued.

There before him he saw, between two large pillars, bearing gigantic,
gilded masts that seemed to mock at him, the woman whom he had adored
and the sight of whom still tore his heart. Pale and dressed in a white
gown, she was leaning toward Rosas in a most adorable attitude, with her
fair hair half-falling on her white shoulders--those shoulders that he
still saw trembling under his kisses, those shoulders on which he might
have pressed his burning lips and his teeth.

That livid beauty, strangely adorable, with her hair and ears dazzling
with jewels, stood clearly out against the background of the box in
which, like an enormous Cyclopean eye, appeared the round, ground glass
let into the door, forming a nimbus of light around Marianne's brow.
Paler than her, with a sickly but smiling countenance, Rosas showed his
bloodless, pale, Spanish face beside that of Marianne, as tragic looking
as a portrait by Coello. His tired-looking, pensive, thin face was
resting on his hand, which through the opera-glass looked a transparent
hand of wax, on which an enormous emerald ring flashed under the
gaslight. Monsieur de Rosas did not move.

She, on the contrary, at times inclined toward him, bringing her mouth
close to the Castilian's ear, standing out against his reddish beard as
if detached therefrom, and she whispered to Rosas words that Vaudrey
surmised, and which caused a spark of feverish delight to lighten up
Jose's sad eyes. As she leaned back tilting her chair, her satin corsage
below the bust was hidden from Sulpice by the edge of the box and he saw
only her face, neck and white shoulders, and she seemed to him to be
quite naked, the lines of her serpentine body sharply marked by the red
line of the velvet border. And with his greedy glance he continued to
trace the