raised to the ceiling, as he sprang lightly into the air, seemed so entirely of another species than the rational folk in every day clothes, in the midst of whom he was pursuing like a madman the course of his ecstatic dream, so alien to the preoccupations of their life, so anterior to the habits of their civilisation, so enfranchised from all the laws of nature, that it was as restful and as fresh a spectacle as watching a butterfly straying along a crowded street to follow with one’s eyes, between the strips of canvas, the natural arabesques traced by his winged capricious painted oscillations. But at that moment Saint-Loup conceived the idea that his mistress was paying undue attention to this dancer, who was engaged now in practising for the last time the figure of fun with which he was going to take the stage, and his face darkened. “You might look the other way,” he warned her gloomily. “You know that none of those dancer-fellows is worth the rope they can at least fall off and break their necks, and they’re the sort of people who go about afterwards boasting that you’ve taken notice of them. Besides, you know very well you’ve been told to go to your dressing-room and change. You’ll be missing your call again.” A group of men—journalists—noticing the look of fury on Saint-Loup’s face, came nearer, amused, to listen to what we were saying. And as the stage-hands had just set up some scenery on our other side we were forced into close contact with them. “Oh, but I know him; he’s a friend of mine,” cried Saint-Loup’s mistress, her eyes still fixed on the dancer. “Look how well made he is, do watch those little hands of his dancing away by themselves like his whole body!” The dancer turned his head towards her, and his human person appeared beneath the sylph that he was endeavouring to be, the clear grey jelly of his eyes trembled and sparkled between eyelids stiff with paint, and a smile extended the corners of his mouth into cheeks plastered with rouge; then, to amuse the girl, like a singer who hums to oblige us the air of the song in which we have told her that we admired her singing, he began to repeat the movement of his hands, counterfeiting himself with the fineness of a parodist and the good humour of a child. “Oh, that’s too lovely, the way he copies himself,” she cried, clapping her hands. “I implore you, my dearest girl,” Saint-Loup broke in, in a tone of utter misery, “do not make a scene here, I can’t stand it; I swear, if you say another word I won’t go with you to your room, I shall walk straight out; come, don’t be so naughty.... You oughtn’t to stand about in the cigar smoke like that, it’ll make you ill,” he went on, to me, with the solicitude he had shewn for me in our Balbec days. “Oh! What a good thing it would be if you did go.” “I warn you, if I do I shan’t come back.” “That’s more than I should venture to hope.”