Then there was one who at first glance looked in the group as if he must be an acquaintance come to see them off. He was tall and proportionately broad, with stalwart shoulders, a deep chest, and a big neck; superlatively well groomed and dressed. The gloss of his silk hat was not broken by the wilfulness of one hair. He carried himself a trifle more than erect, and swept his limited horizon with a calm, kingly eye. His face was close-shaven, a smooth coppery rose, shading easily into the color of his close-cropped hair. His features were of the rather thick, round, good-natured type, and time was beginning to divide up his face into heavier masses than occur in the forties; but these facts did not prevent his presence on the whole from impressing an observer with the sense that he looked at something really very fine. This was Bronson, whose name on the program would occupy the most room: the great Bronson, Anthony, the tenor of long sustained fame--sustained, indeed, so long that these appearances in parts that knew him only by that fame had now been projected. Then there was a little plump woman, the one who kept the others laughing; and she carried, besides what one is accustomed to see on the arms of travelers, all the things she had forgotten to put into her trunk; among which were an alarm-clock, a sponge-bag, a pink flannel dressing-sacque, and a little image of the Virgin. She bubbled on, in a voice as impossible to forget or mistake for another's as her face; which face, however, was not pretty, but so faithfully reflected a nature as to be memorable for its want of all malice, concealment, or suspicion. It was not that her features were child-like which accounted for her face bringing to mind a child's, but that it shared some quality inclining one on shortest acquaintance, without fear of rebuff, to treat its winsome, unsevere, uncritical owner familiarly and affectionately. She was not pretty, but certainly her dark-edged, misty, pale blue eyes, with their capacity in the same measure for humor and sentiment, under eyebrows sympathetically working with her thoughts, and lids stained a tender bistre, had an attaching sweetness; and the clear spaces of her face, the forehead and temples, something cool and rare, like the stamp of talent; while just beside her ear, where a faint lock of silken black hung an inch or so down a soft, sallow cheek, was a spot creating an instant desire to kiss it. This was Miss Nevers, the pianiste; Nevers, they briefly called her in speaking of her, pronouncing the name like an English one; Marie-Aimée they called her in speaking to her, all excepting Odiesky, who did not yet know her well enough; except, too, the sixth member of the party, who could never take it into his head to do so. The latter was a homely, thin man, neither young nor old, of the name of Snell, who was engaged to play common accompaniments, and tune the pianos. He stood