but there did not
appear to be much hope that Stephen could get anything at the last
minute. The little spice of difficulty gave a fillip of interest,
however; and he remembered how the charming child on the boat had said
that she "liked doing difficult things." He wondered what she was doing
now; and as he thought of her, white and ethereal in the night and in
the dawn-light, she seemed to him like the foam-flowers that had
blossomed for an instant on the crests of dark waves, through which
their vessel forged. "For a moment white, then gone forever." The words
glittered in his mind, and fascinated him, calling up the image of the
girl, pale against the night and rainy sea. "For a moment white, then
gone forever," he repeated, and asked himself whence came the line. From
Burns, he fancied; and thought it quaintly appropriate to the fair child
whose clear whiteness had thrown a gleam into his life before she
vanished.

All the seats for this second night of Victoria Ray's short engagement
were sold at the Folies Bergeres, he found, from the dearest to the
cheapest: but there was standing room still when Stephen arrived, and he
squeezed himself in among a group of light-hearted, long-haired students
from the Latin Quarter. He had an hour to wait before Victoria Ray would
dance, but there was some clever conjuring to be seen, a famous singer
of _chansons_ to be heard, and other performances which made the time
pass well enough. Then, at last, it was the new dancer's "turn."

The curtain remained down for several minutes, as some scenic
preparation was necessary before her first dance. Gay French music was
playing, and people chattered through it, or laughed in high Parisian
voices. A blue haze of smoke hung suspended like a thin veil, and the
air was close, scented with tobacco and perfume. Stephen looked at his
programme, beginning to feel bored. His elbows were pressed against his
sides by the crowd. Miss Ray was down for two dances, the Dance of the
Statue and the Dance of the Shadow. The atmosphere of the place
depressed him. He doubted after all, that he would care for the dancing.
But as he began to wish he had not come the curtain went up, to show the
studio of a sculptor, empty save for the artist's marble masterpieces.
Through a large skylight, and a high window at the back of the stage, a
red glow of sunset streamed into the bare room. In the shadowy corners
marble forms were grouped, but in the centre, directl