quickly than they want to get to it.

When Newland Archer opened the door at the back of the club box the
curtain had just gone up on the garden scene. There was no reason why
the young man should not have come earlier, for he had dined at seven,
alone with his mother and sister, and had lingered afterward over a
cigar in the Gothic library with glazed black-walnut bookcases and
finial-topped chairs which was the only room in the house where Mrs.
Archer allowed smoking. But, in the first place, New York was a
metropolis, and perfectly aware that in metropolises it was "not the
thing" to arrive early at the opera; and what was or was not "the
thing" played a part as important in Newland Archer's New York as the
inscrutable totem terrors that had ruled the destinies of his
forefathers thousands of years ago.

The second reason for his delay was a personal one. He had dawdled
over his cigar because he was at heart a dilettante, and thinking over
a pleasure to come often gave him a subtler satisfaction than its
realisation. This was especially the case when the pleasure was a
delicate one, as his pleasures mostly were; and on this occasion the
moment he looked forward to was so rare and exquisite in quality
that--well, if he had timed his arrival in accord with the prima
donna's stage-manager he could not have entered the Academy at a more
significant moment than just as she was singing: "He loves me--he
loves me not--HE LOVES ME!--" and sprinkling the falling daisy petals
with notes as clear as dew.

She sang, of course, "M'ama!" and not "he loves me," since an
unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the
German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be
translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of
English-speaking audiences. This seemed as natural to Newland Archer
as all the other conventions on which his life was moulded: such as the
duty of using two silver-backed brushes with his monogram in blue
enamel to part his hair, and of never appearing in society without a
flower (preferably a gardenia) in his buttonhole.

"M'ama ... non m'ama ..." the prima donna sang, and "M'ama!", with a
final burst of love triumphant, as she pressed the dishevelled daisy to
her lips and lifted her large eyes to the sophisticated countenance of
the little brown Faust-Capoul, who was vainly trying, in a tight purple
velvet doublet and plumed cap, to look as pure and true as his