ng could be more appropriate. The whole effect was
astonishing, ravishing. And within me--far, far within the recesses of my
glowing heart--a thin, clear whisper spoke and said that I, and I alone,
was the cause of that beauty of sight and sound. Not Morenita, and not
Montferiot, not Diaz himself, but Magda, the self-constituted odalisque,
was its author. I had thought of it; I had schemed it; I had fashioned
it; I had evoked the emotion in it. The others had but exquisitely
embroidered my theme. Without me they must have been dumb and futile. On
my shoulders lay the burden and the glory. And though I was amazed,
perhaps naively, to see what I had done, nevertheless I had done it--I!
The entire opera-house, that complicated and various machine, was simply
a means to express me. And it was to my touch on their heartstrings that
the audience vibrated. With all my humility, how proud I was--coldly and
arrogantly proud, as only the artist can be! I wore my humility as I wore
my black gown. Even Diaz could not penetrate to the inviolable place in
my heart, where the indestructible egoism defied the efforts of love to
silence it. And yet people say there is nothing stronger than love.

At the close of the act, while the ringing applause, much more
enthusiastic than before, gave certainty of a genuine and extraordinary
success, I could not help blushing. It was as if I was in danger of being
discovered as the primal author of all that fleeting loveliness, as if my
secret was bound to get about, and I to be forced from my seclusion in
order to receive the acclamations of Paris. I played nervously and
self-consciously with my fan, and I wrapped my humility closer round me,
until at length the tumult died away, and the hum of charming, eager
chatter reassured my ears again.

Diaz did not come. The entr'acte stretched out long, and the chatter lost
some of its eagerness, and he did not come. Perhaps he could not come.
Perhaps he was too much engaged, too much preoccupied, to think of the
gallantry which he owed to his mistress. A man cannot always be dreaming
of his mistress. A mistress must be reconciled to occasional neglect; she
must console herself with chocolates. And they were chocolates from
Marquis's, in the Passage des Panoramas....

Then he came, accompanied.

A whirl of high-seasoned, laughing personalities invaded my privacy.
Diaz, smiling humorously, was followed by a man and a cloaked woman.

'Dear lady,' he said