I been surfeited with beauty, my eyes would have lingered in a
species of wonder on the girl just seating herself in a corner of the
stage box. It is possible that I have seen other women as beautiful,
many more classically perfect of feature, but never have I looked upon a
face so radiant, so bewildering.

For the moment I scarcely glanced at the girl's companions, though I was
vaguely conscious that there was an older woman, and that two men were
taking chairs in the darker background of the box.

All the other figures on the stage and in the auditorium became
meaningless for me. There was the dazzling girl in white, and, so far as
I was concerned, no one else in the theatre.

The simple, snowy frock, without jewels or ornamentation of any kind,
was the most becoming frame which could have been chosen for the
picture. The oval face, with its pearly skin, its curved red lips, its
starry, long-lashed eyes (which might have been brown or violet, so far
as I could tell), and the aureole of waving, ruddy gold hair were all so
vivid in their marvelous effect of colour, that the dead white gown set
them off far more artistically than the most carefully-chosen tints
could have done.

The girl could not, I thought, have been more than twenty, and every
turn of the beautifully-poised little head, every dimpling smile, told
that she was full of the joy of life.

"What do you think of Wildred?" whispered Farnham, his lazy American
drawl waking me out of a dream.

I did not wish him to see how completely I had been absorbed, how
foolishly I had lost my head, and therefore I turned my attention to the
two men in the back of the box.

CHAPTER II

The Man with the Pale Eyes

_En passant_, my eyes dwelt for an instant upon a stout woman of a
certain age, whose figure was encased in a sort of armour of steel-grey
satin and beads, and whose carefully-arranged head was adorned by a
small tiara of diamonds, but they found no temptation to linger.

One of the men was old, grey-haired, and large of girth, with a huge
expanse of snowy shirt, and a head guiltless of hair. The other was
comparatively young, not many years past my own age, perhaps, and a
curious thrill, which I could not myself have explained, passed through
me as I looked, through half-shut eyes, at his face. Where had I seen it
before? Or did it bear but a haunting resemblance to some other, painted
on my memory's retina in lurid, yet partially obliterated