nd down waiting for Emma to finish
dressing.

He saw her from behind in the glass between two lights. Her black eyes
seemed blacker than ever. Her hair, undulating toward the ears, shone
with a blue luster; a rose in her chignon trembled on its mobile stalk,
with artificial dewdrops on the tips of the leaves. She wore a gown of
pale saffron trimmed with three bouquets of pompon roses mixed with
green.

Charles came and kissed her on her shoulder.

"Let me alone!" she said; "you are tumbling me."

One could hear the flourish of the violin and the notes of a horn. She
went downstairs restraining herself from running.

Dancing had begun. Guests were arriving. There was some crushing. She
sat down on a form near the door.

The quadrille over, the floor was occupied by groups of men standing up
and talking and servants in livery bearing large trays. Along the line
of seated women painted fans were fluttering, bouquets half-hid smiling
faces, and gold-stoppered scent-bottles were turned in partly-closed
hands, whose white gloves outlined the nails and tightened on the flesh
at the wrists. Lace trimmings, diamond brooches, medallion bracelets
trembled on bodices, gleamed on breasts, clinked on bare arms. The hair,
well smoothed over the temples and knotted at the nape, bore crowns, or
bunches, or sprays of myosotis, jasmine, pomegranate blossoms, ears of
corn, and cornflowers. Calmly seated in their places, mothers with
forbidding countenances were wearing red turbans.

Emma's heart beat rather faster when, her partner holding her by the
tips of the fingers, she took her place in a line with the dancers, and
waited for the first note to start. But her emotion soon vanished, and,
swaying to the rhythm of the orchestra, she glided forward with slight
movements of the neck. A smile rose to her lips at certain delicate
phrases of the violin, that sometimes played alone while the other
instruments were silent; one could hear the clear clink of the
louis-d'or that were being thrown down upon the card-tables in the next
room; then all struck in again, the cornet-a-piston uttered its sonorous
note, feet marked time, skirts swelled and rustled, hands touched and
parted; the same eyes falling before you met yours again.

A few men (some fifteen or so), of twenty-five to forty, scattered here
and there among the dancers or talking at the doorways, distinguished
themselves from the crowd by a certain air of breeding, whatever the