It seemed as if impossible heavens had opened to me; yet there she was, clinging to my arm, and drawing me towards the platform under the musicians’ gallery, where there are tables for the thirsty. Her little plump white hand lay on my coat-sleeve; the air was heady with the perfume of her garments; her roguish black eyes were smiling encouragement into mine; and her red lips were so near, so near, I had to fight down a wild impulse to stoop and snatch a kiss. She drew me towards the tables, and, on the way, she stopped before a mirror fixed in the wall, and rearranged her hair; while I stood close to her, still holding her hat, and waited, feeling the most exquisite proud swelling of the heart, as if I owned her. Her hair put right, she searched in her pocket and produced a small round ivory box, from which—having unscrewed its cover and handed it to me with a “Tiens ça”—she extracted a powder-puff; and therewith she proceeded gently, daintily, to dust her face and throat, examining the effect critically in the glass the while. In the end she said, “Voilà, that’s better,” and turned her face to me for corroboration. “That’s better, isn’t it?” “It’s perfect. But—but you were perfect before, too,” asseverated I. Oh, what a joy beyond measure thus to be singled out and made her confidant and adviser in these intimate affairs.... At our table, leaning back nonchalantly in her chair, as she quaffed her bock and puffed her cigarette, she looked like a bright-eyed, red-lipped bacchante. I gazed at her in a quite unutterable ecstasy of admiration. My conscience told me that I ought to pay her a compliment upon her dancing; but I couldn’t shape one: my wits were paralysed by my emotions. I could only gaze, and gaze, and revel in my unexpected fortune. At last, however, the truth burst from me in a sort of involuntary gasp. “But you are adorable—adorable.” She gave a quick smile of intelligence, of sympathy, and, with a knowing toss of the head and a provoking glance, suggested, “Je te mets la tête en feu, quoi!” She, you perceive, was entirely at her ease, mistress of the situation. It is conceivable that she had met neophytes before—that I was by no means to her the unprecedented experience she was to me. At any rate, she understood my agitation and sought to reassure me. “Don’t be afraid; I’ll not eat you,” she promised. I, in the depths of my mind, had been meditating what I could not but deem an excessively audacious proposal Her last speech gave me my cue, and I risked it. “Perhaps you would like to eat something else? If—if we should go somewhere and sup?” “Monsieur thinks he will be safer to take precautions,” she laughed. “Well—I submit.”