"Is she old, Monsieur?" "No, not old; not thirty years." "Ah!--The sea is very rough to-night, Monsieur." "Yes; more so than we often see it." She went downstairs. By-and-by, as she sat knitting, she heard Monsieur's fiddle as he played over a passage in the morrow's score. III. Mademoiselle Elise was down early at the theatre, which looked very grey and very miserable in the pitiless daylight. M. Lorman was with her. When Raoul appeared, she said: "So this is your monster. Introduce him to me." And the hunchback, with his fiddle under his arm and his bow hanging loosely from his left hand, was duly presented. Mademoiselle's eyes beamed graciously as she held out her hand and said what pleasure it gave her to make the acquaintance of one who loved art for its own sake. Then, while M. Lorman bustled here and there, she took the violin and begged Raoul to show her how to hold it. She laughed like a child when the drawing of the bow across the strings only produced a horrid noise. Then she asked him to play the dance movement from the garden scene. He played. "A little slower, please." He played more slowly. She moved a few steps, and then paused and sat down, marking the time of the music with her foot. "Yes, that is beautiful!" she said. Raoul sat and watched while the rehearsal proceeded. They played "Le vrai Amant." Mademoiselle infused a new life into all, and scarcely seemed to feel the labour of it. Raoul marvelled that a woman, apparently delicate, should be possessed of such tireless energy. She criticised so freely, and insisted so much on the repetition of seeming trivialities, that, as the morning wore on, Augustin--who was "le vrai Amant"--lost patience and glanced markedly at his watch. But she did not heed him. Beside Raoul sat M. Lorman, in high spirits. "Good! good!" he ejaculated at intervals. "But she is marvellous!" And after each outburst of satisfaction he took a pinch of snuff. When at last Mademoiselle sank exhausted into her chair, the others seized hats and cloaks and fled hurriedly, lest she should revive and begin all over again. She called to Raoul to bring his score, that she might show him where to play slowly and where to pause; and M. Lorman having wrapped a shawl around her shoulders, she began gossiping with Augustin. When they differed, she appealed to Raoul, and agreed prettily with his decision. Augustin succumbed to her influence at once, and lost all his sulkiness. He had played at the Odeon, and he knew what art was. M. Sarcey had said of him that he would do well; and M. Regnier had been pleased to advise him. He told Mademoiselle this, and he promised to bring to her a copy of the _Temps_ that she might read the great critic's words for herself. She ended the conversation with coquettish abruptness, and begged Raoul to kneel beside her chair a moment, and follow her pencil as she marked the manuscript and explained what her marks were intended to mean.