used a strange, distorting opera-glass
which made the loveliest face seem hideous.

With this he sat in his box, he surveyed the scene around him. Who was
that old man over there, sitting beside a dancing-girl that Raphael had
seen at Taillefer's? The owner of the curiosity shop! He had at last
fallen in love, as Raphael had jestingly desired. No doubt the magic
skin had shrunk under that wish before Raphael had measured it. A
beautiful woman entered the theatre with a peer of France at her side. A
murmur of admiration arose as she took her seat. She smiled at Raphael.
In spite of the distorted image on his opera-glass, Raphael knew her. It
was the Countess Foedora! In a single glance of intolerable scorn the
man she had played false avenged himself. He did not waste an ill-wish
on her. He merely took the glasses from his eyes, and answered her smile
with a look of cold contempt. Everybody observed the sudden pallor of
the countess; it was a public rejection.

"Raphael!"

The marquis turned at the sound of a beloved voice. Pauline was sitting
in the box next to his. How beautiful she had grown! How maidenly she
was still! Putting down his opera-glasses, Raphael talked to her of old
times.

"You must come and see me to-morrow," said Pauline. "I have your great
work on 'The Theory of the Will.' Don't you remember leaving it in the
garret?"

"I was mad and blind then," said Raphael. "But I am cured at last."

"I wish Pauline to love me!" he kept repeating to himself all the way
home. "I wish Pauline to love me!"

With a strange mixture of wild anguish and fierce joy, he looked at the
magic skin to see what this vehement wish had cost him. Nothing! Not a
sign of shrinkage could be discerned. The fact was that even the
greatest talisman could not realise a desire which had long since been
fulfilled. Pauline had loved Raphael from the time when they first met;
while he had been priding himself on living on twelve pounds a year, she
had been painting screens up to two or three o'clock every night, in
order to buy him food and firing.

"Oh, my simple-minded darling," she said to him the next day, sitting on
his lap and twining her arms about his neck, "you will never know what a
pleasure it was for me to pay my handsome tutor for all his kindness.
And wasn't I cunning? You never found me out."

"But I've found out now," said Raphael, "and I am going to punish you
severely. Instead of marrying you in three months' ti