or
instance, who represents a certain class of artists, or of Madame
Bonanni who is an arch-type, or of poor Edmund Lushington, a literary
Englishman, who was just then very unhappy and very sorry for himself.
Margaret and Lushington, and the elderly prima donna, and even Mrs.
Rushmore, are all much more like you and me than Constantine Logotheti,
the Greek financier of artistic tastes, watching the woman he covets,
from the depths of his lower box during rehearsal.

He watched, and he coveted; and presently he fell to thinking of the
wonderful things which money can do, when it is skilfully used; and he
fell to scheming and plotting, and laying deep plans; and moreover he
recalled the days when Margaret had first appeared to him as an
animated work of art, and he remembered why he had persuaded
Schreiermeyer to change the opera from _Faust_ to _Rigoletto_. He had
regretted the change later, when she had risen to the higher place in
his heart, because it required her to wear a man's disguise in the last
act; but now that she was again in his eyes what she had been at first,
he was glad he had made the suggestion, and that the manager had taken
his advice, for there was something in that last act which should serve
him when the time came.

CHAPTER XVIII

After the adventure on the Versailles road, Lushington eschewed
disguises, changed his lodgings again and appeared in clothes that
fitted him. It was a great relief to look like a human being and a
gentleman, even at the cost of calling himself an ass for having tried
to look like something else. There was but one difficulty in the way of
resuming his former appearance, and that lay in the loss of his beard,
which would take some time to grow again, while its growth would
involve retirement from civilisation during several weeks. But he
reflected that it was fashionable to be clean-shaven, and that, in
point of appearance, all that is fashionable is right, though Plato
would have declared it to be removed in the third degree from truth.

A week after the accident he went out to Versailles in the morning.
Mrs. Rushmore had a headache and Margaret received him. She smiled as
she took his hand, and she looked hard at his face, as if to be sure
that it was he, after all. The absence of the gleaming fair beard made
a great difference.

'I think I like you better without it,' she said, at last. 'Your face
has more character!'

'It's the inevitable,' answered Lu