'How!' cried Pericles, amazed, and plucking after Carlo to stop him. 'I bet you--' 'How much?' 'I bet you a thousand florins you do not see la Vittoria to-night.' 'Good. I bet you a thousand florins you do not see Irma.' 'No Vittoria, I say!' 'And I say, no Lazzeruola!' Agostino, who was pacing the lobby, sent Pericles distraught with the same tale of the rape of Irma. He rushed to Signora Piaveni's box and heard it repeated. There he beheld, sitting in the background, an old English acquaintance, with whom Captain Gambier was conversing. 'My dear Powys, you have come all the way from England to see your favourite's first night. You will be shocked, sir. She has neglected her Art. She is exiled, banished, sent away to study and to compose her mind.' 'I think you are mistaken,' said Laura. 'You will see her almost immediately.' 'Signora, pardon me; do I not know best?' 'You may have contrived badly.' Pericles blinked and gnawed his moustache as if it were food for patience. 'I would wager a milliard of francs,' he muttered. With absolute pathos he related to Mr. Powys the aberrations of the divinely-gifted voice, the wreck which Vittoria strove to become, and from which he alone was striving to rescue her. He used abundant illustrations, coarse and quaint, and was half hysterical; flashing a white fist and thumping the long projection of his knee with a wolfish aspect. His grotesque sincerity was little short of the shedding of tears. 'And your sister, my dear Powys?' he asked, as one returning to the consideration of shadows. 'My sister accompanies me, but not to the opera.' 'For another campaign--hein?' 'To winter in Italy, at all events.'