"Who could share it with you?" he asked, evasively. "I do not know, I only know that it must be all or none for me," she answered. "It is all--is it not, Lance?" He kissed her and would fain have said yes, but it came home to him with a sharp conviction that his heart had been given to one woman, and one only--no other could ever possess it. A few days afterward, when Lord Chandos expressed a wish to go to the opera again, his wife looked at him in wonder. "Again?" she said. "Why, Lance, it is only two nights since you were there, and it is the same opera; you will grow tired of it." "The only amusement I really care for is the opera," he said. "I am growing too lazy for balls, but I never tire of music." He said to himself, that if for the future he wished to go to the opera he would not mention the fact, but would go without her. They went out that evening: the opera was "Norma." Lord Chandos heard nothing and saw nothing but the wondrous face of Norma; every note of that music went home to his heart--the love, the trust, the reproaches. When she sang them in her grandly pathetic voice, it was as though each one were addressed to himself. Three times did Lady Chandos address him without any response, a thing which in her eyes was little less than a crime. "How you watch La Vanira," she said. "I am sure you admire her very much." He looked at her with eyes that were dazed--that saw nothing; the eyes of a man more than half mad. "And now look," she said. "Why, Lance, La Vanira is looking at me. What eyes she has. They stir my very heart and trouble me. They are saying something to me." "Marion, hush! What are you talking about?" he cried. "La Vanira's eyes--she is looking at me, Lance." "Nonsense!" he said, and the one word was so abruptly pronounced that Lady Chandos felt sure it was nonsense and said no more. But after that evening he said no more about going to the opera. If he felt any wish to go, he would go; it would be quite easy for him to make some excuse to her. And those evenings grew more and more frequent. He did not dare to disobey Leone; he did not dare to go to her house, or to offer to see her in the opera house. He tried hard to meet her accidentally, but that happy accident never occurred; yet he could not rest, he must see her; something that was stronger than himself drew him near her. He was weak of purpose; he never resolutely took himself in hand and said: "I am married now. I have a wife at home. Leone's beauty, Leone's talents, are all less than nothing to me. I will be true to my wife." He never said that; he never braced his will, or his energies to the task of forgetting her; he dallied with the temptation as he had done before; he allowed himself to be tempted as he had done before; the result was that he fell as he had fallen before.