Amused with their sentimental sword-play they exchanged smiles as two fencers exchange salutes. Isabelle inhaled life greedily as if it were a bouquet of tuberoses. Her bosom rose and fell under her bodice of soft silk, which gave a hint of the firm contours. Jean could follow the fine blue veins which ran over the white skin and lost themselves under the silk. He pictured through the cunning draperies that faultless body, fit pendant to her head with the queenly profile, crowned by jet black hair. He had only to stoop to pluck this human flower, this rare orchid in the flesh. In the stem which bent towards him, in the unfolding of the petals, in the quivering from head to foot as before the warm evening breeze, he saw her offer of herself. Why should he not pluck? Did he not know the value of beauty, the value of youth, which enhances joy so much? But had he not known this he would not have worn that expression of fervent melancholy in the presence of joy. “How long I have been waiting for you!” she cried in a different voice, in which the accent of desire was plain to his ears. “You were really waiting for me?” He could scarcely misunderstand her when she replied: “I am still waiting for you.” The orchestra was playing the prelude to the second act. Madame de Marthenay came back into the box with M. de Lavernay, to whom M. Landeau had given up his place. The latter, to get away from this serious music, which differed so much from light opera, and to direct in peace from the reading-room his dealings on the Stock Exchange, dispatched to his wife a second admirer, whom he destined in his mind to be a check on the other. By her coldness to him, which he refused like so many husbands to attribute to his own shortcomings, Isabelle infatuated him and made sure of her dominion. She had the art of mastering this coarse, full-blooded adorer, who growled to show himself off, like a wild animal before his tamer. He satisfied all her fancies, all her whims, inspired as much by his own vanity as by the passion to which he surrendered himself so whole-heartedly. And if he hated her flirtations, he paid no more attention to them than one would pay to the tiresome noise of bells on a show horse’s neck.