"I saw her get into her carriage."

"What then?"

"She did not get in alone."

"Nonsense!"

"Some one got in with her."

"Who?"

"Guess."

"The king," said Ursus.

"In the first place," said Master Nicless, "there is no king at present.
We are not living under a king. Guess who got into the carriage with the
duchess."

"Jupiter," said Ursus.

The hotel-keeper replied,--

"Tom-Jim-Jack!"

Gwynplaine, who had not said a word, broke silence.

"Tom-Jim-Jack!" he cried.

There was a pause of astonishment, during which the low voice of Dea was
heard to say,--

"Cannot this woman be prevented coming."

CHAPTER VIII.

SYMPTOMS OF POISONING.

The "apparition" did not return. It did not reappear in the theatre, but
it reappeared to the memory of Gwynplaine. Gwynplaine was, to a certain
degree, troubled. It seemed to him that for the first time in his life
he had seen a woman.

He made that first stumble, a strange dream. We should beware of the
nature of the reveries that fasten on us. Reverie has in it the mystery
and subtlety of an odour. It is to thought what perfume is to the
tuberose. It is at times the exudation of a venomous idea, and it
penetrates like a vapour. You may poison yourself with reveries, as with
flowers. An intoxicating suicide, exquisite and malignant. The suicide
of the soul is evil thought. In it is the poison. Reverie attracts,
cajoles, lures, entwines, and then makes you its accomplice. It makes
you bear your half in the trickeries which it plays on conscience. It
charms; then it corrupts you. We may say of reverie as of play, one
begins by being a dupe, and ends by being a cheat.

Gwynplaine dreamed.

He had never before seen Woman. He had seen the shadow in the women of
the populace, and he had seen the soul in Dea.

He had just seen the reality.

A warm and living skin, under which one felt the circulation of
passionate blood; an outline with the precision of marble and the
undulation of the wave; a high and impassive mien, mingling refusal with
attraction, and summing itself up in its own glory; hair of the colour
of the reflection from a furnace; a gallantry of adornment producing in
herself and in others a tremor of voluptuousness, the half-revealed
nudity betraying a disdainful desire to be coveted at a distance by the
crowd; an ineradicable coquetry; the charm of impenetrability,
temptation seasoned by the glimpse of perdition, a promise to the senses