ed, but the floor was
full, even after the tired _ballerine_ had been permitted by the
management to go home.

Gerald himself now became one of the slightly bored-looking men he had
observed earlier, strolling about, _claque_ under arm, in the rigid
black and white which took on an effect of austerity amid the
blossom-colors of the costumes. He sincerely hoped no one would approach
him to intrigue him, and the hope found expression, more than he knew,
in his countenance. He felt unable to meet such an adventure in a manner
that would satisfy his taste. It marked a fundamental difference between
him, at bottom a New-Englander, and his friends of Latin blood, he
thought, that he had not the limberness, the laisser-aller, the lack of
self-consciousness and stupid shame, which enables them so
good-humoredly to take the chance of appearing fools. And so before this
romance he was only a reader; they were it--the romance.

He could deplore his own gray role, but not change it; he therefore
wished anew, every time a merry masker looked as though she might intend
accosting him that she would think better of it and leave him in
deserved neglect. He had his wish; he was in the whole evening teased by
nobody whatever.

His eyes, straying over the crowd, sought for known faces. All Florence
had turned out for the occasion, but some of it had by this time gone
home. Most of the men he knew had women on their arms, and from their
silence or talkativeness one might without undue cynicism determine
whether these were their own wives and daughters or wives and daughters
of others.

A tall, gray-whiskered old gentleman in uniform passed him--none other
than Antonia's friend, General Costanzi--who was trying to retain all
his dignity while beset by two frolicsome little creatures looking like
the chorus in "Faust," who, suspended one on each of his arms, were
trying to win from him a promise to take them to supper. He sent toward
Gerald a look of comical long-suffering, to which Gerald replied by a
nod vaguely congratulatory, and a smile that courteously wished him luck
in that lottery.

The painter Castagnola, broad-blown, debonair, passed him, in a costume
of sterling and royal magnificence, copied from a portrait of Francis
First whom he in feature resembled. At his side, with gold cymbals in
her hands, went a figure in floating robes of daffodil gauze, a dancer
from one of the frescoes of Pompeii, wearing a mask--four inches of