The old story of Iphigenia unfolded itself slowly. But Jean was beyond the musician’s power. Before him, between the black velvet ribbon and the dress, he saw Isabelle’s fair flesh and imagined the silky softness of it. Half turned towards him, she showed her face in profile. He followed the proud, slightly curved line of her nose, and stopped to dwell on those red lips, those lonely lips of an Eastern slave. Had she not said: “I am still waiting for you?” What was he waiting for? Had the countless seductions of life suddenly lost their charm for him, summed up for him as they were in this lovely woman, as a drop of scent in a Persian bottle contains the attar of a thousand roses? Had the African sun frozen his blood instead of infusing fire into it? Young and free, how could he use his youth and freedom in a better way? The head of whose every movement his thoughts were so filled turned, and now that the profile was lost to him, his glance had to content itself with the heavy mass of her hair, with the neck and the line of her shoulders, so sensuous in their appeal. Giddy, he closed his eyes for a moment and swore in a passionate fury that he would bring to fruition the mad desire which overwhelmed him. At this moment of his abandonment he was swept by the chords of a deep and sustained harmony, which even in the stress of the sorrow which they were depicting never lost their grave serenity. His overstrung nerves were all a-quiver. His soul, its sensitiveness increased tenfold by the expectation of pleasure, drank in the divine music as a dried-up flower drinks in the dew. On the stage Orestes and Pylades were disputing as to who should have the joy of dying for the other. They had reached the dark shores of Tauris. The idol of the barbarians had demanded the sacrifice of one of them. The high priestess, none other than the unhappy Iphigenia, had indicated Pylades, and Orestes claimed the pain for himself--a quarrel whose pathos can never grow old, where friendship, inspired by the intoxication of generosity, surpasses love itself in its transports. Jean strove to shut out the troubling influence of those sounds which were so at war with the turmoil of his senses. But his deadened will-power could not defend him long. He loved life in all its manifestations of beauty too much not to understand and admire such perfect art, whose holy inspiration tore from the heart, as one tears up weeds from a garden, all evil desires, all hatreds and light thoughts.