"They can't see. Every member of the orchestra is blind. But don't listen to the music. That is well enough for old gentlemen: something better is in store for us." Leonin knocked twice on the partition wall separating them from the next box, the signal was repeated above, and in a few minutes a door opened in the partition and a woman's form appeared. A more beautiful creature could not have stepped out of the pages of the "Arabian Nights." She wore a long Persian caftan that reached to her ankles and defined rather than veiled her shapely figure. Her slim waist was encircled by a golden girdle, while around her neck and on her bosom hung strings of pearls. The long, flowing sleeves of her caftan were slit up in front and gathered only at the shoulder, thus exposing to view the most perfect pair of arms ever dreamt of by sculptor. The face was of a noble Caucasian type, with finely shaped nose, full lips, arched eyebrows, and bright eyes of the deepest black. The sole ornament of her head was furnished by two magnificent braids of hair that fairly touched the wearer's heels. She paused in surprise on the threshold. "You are not alone," said she. "Come in, Jéza," returned Leonin. "This young gentleman is one half of my soul, of which you are the other half." So saying, with a quick movement he embraced the two and pressed them to his breast, after which he seated them side by side on another divan opposite his own. "There, Ödön," he exclaimed, "isn't she different from those cold beauties of the upper world? Don't you find it more interesting here in the lower regions?" Jéza met Ödön's unmoved inspection of her charms with a sort of timid wonder. "Did you ever see such eyes as those?" asked Leonin, "or a mouth like that, which can smile, pout, tease, laugh, beg, and scold, so that you don't know which best becomes it?" "Do you wish to sell me?" asked the Circassian girl. "The purchaser would have to give me a new world in exchange," was the answer. "But if you should fall in love with one who is my friend and brother, he should receive you as a present." Jéza sank back in a corner of the divan, lowered her eyelids and let her hands fall into her lap. "Ödön, you really ought to have been an animal-tamer," said Leonin, as he took in both his hands one of the Circassian girl's dainty little red-slippered feet. "This young creature is naturally wild, impulsive, talkative, and full of whims; but as soon as she meets the severe glance of your _mal occhio_, she subsides and sits there like one of the novices in the Smolna nunnery. Jéza, you are lost. All of those beautiful wild beasts known as women become mute and helpless the moment this lion-tamer looks at them." The Circassian girl tossed her head and turned a defiant look upon Ödön; but no sooner did she meet his eye than she blushed in spite of herself--perhaps for the first time since the slave-dealer at Yekaterinograd had severed her girdle.