hat they could
from outside. Even the Grand-Duke is hustled and shoved in the press:
for as the dance quickens the circle narrows, till there is scarcely
room for the movement. Men of letters and of politics, breathing
hard, thrust their heads forward, while their decorations swing like
cow-bells, and grinning from ear to ear show their watery lips and
toothless jaws with grotesque animal cachinnations. Even the Prince
d'Athis stoops with less contempt for humanity, as he gazes upon this
marvel of youth and fairy grace, who with the tips of her toes takes off
the masks of convention; and the Turk, Mourad Bey, who has sat the
whole evening without a word in the depths of an armchair, is now
gesticulating in the front row with open nostrils and staring eyes.

[Illustration: Seem as easy as the hovering of a dragon-fly 120]

In the midst of the wild shouts of applause the girl springs and leaps
with so harmonious a concealment of the muscular working of her frame,
that her dance might seem as easy as the hovering of a dragon-fly, but
for the few drops on her firm rounded neck and the smile, forced,
tense, and almost painful, at the corner of her mouth, which betray the
exhausting effort of the exquisite little creature, Paul Astier, who did
not care for dancing, had stayed on the terrace to smoke. The applause
and the thin sounds of the piano, audible in the distance, made an
accompaniment to his reflections, which took shape little by little,
even as his outward eyes, growing accustomed to the dark, made out
by degrees in the garden the trunks of the trees and their quivering
leaves, and far away at the end the delicate tracery of an old-fashioned
trellis against the wall. It was so hard to succeed; one must hold on
so long to reach the desired point, always close at hand and always
receding. Why was it that Colette seemed every moment on the point of
falling into his arms, and yet when he went back he had to begin
again from the beginning? It looked as if in his absence some one for
amusement pulled down his work. Who was it? It was that dead fellow,
confound him! He ought to be at her side from morning to night; but how
could he, with the perpetual necessity of running after money?

There came a light step, a soft sound of velvet. It was his mother
looking for him. Why did he not come into the drawing-room with all the
rest? She leaned over the balustrade beside him and wanted to know what
he was thinking about.

'O