“And?” the word burst from him eagerly as he leaned toward her.

“I broke a bottle of perfume, do you remember?” her soft laugh shook in her full, white throat, “your coat still smelt of it next day, you said.”

Her wonderful voice, softened now to a speaking tone, seemed to endow each word, not only with melody, but with form and colour.  They became living things to him while she spoke, and the night he had almost forgotten, stood out presently as in the glow of a conflagration of his memory.  He smelt again the perfume which she had spilled on his coat; he saw again the fading roses, heaped on chairs and tables, that overflowed her dressing room.  It was the night of her great triumph—­the eyes with which she looked at him still held the intoxication of her own music—­and it was to the applause of a multitude, that, alone with her behind the scenes, he had first taken her in his arms.

“It’s all over, I tell you,” he said angrily; “so what’s the use of this?”

“It’s never over!—­it’s never over!” she repeated in her singing voice.

She was very close to him at last; but breaking away with an effort, he crossed the room and laid his hand upon the door.

“It was over forever two years ago,” he said, “and now good-bye!”

He held out his hand, but without taking it, she stood motionless while she looked at him with her unchanging smile.

“Then I’ll let it be good-bye,” she answered, “but not this way—­not just like this—­”

Her voice mocked him; and moved by an impulse which was half daring, half vanity, he closed the door again and came back to where she stood.

“So long as it’s good-bye, I’ll have it any way you wish,” he said.

CHAPTER VIII

SHOWS THAT LOVE WITHOUT WISDOM IS FOLLY

The odd part was, he admitted next morning as he sat at breakfast, that from first to last he had not found one moment’s pleasure in the society of Madame Alta.  Pleasure in a suitable quantity he was inclined to regard as sufficient excuse for the most serious indiscretion; but in this case the temptation to which he had yielded appeared to him, by the light of day, to be entirely out of proportion to any actual enjoyment he had experienced.  An impulse which was neither vanity nor daring, but a mixture of the two, had swept away his resolve before he was clearly aware, as he expressed it, “of the drift of the wind.”  He had not wanted to go with her and yet he had gone, impelled by some fury of adventure which had seemed all the time to pull against his saner inclinations.

While he ate his two eggs and his four pieces of toast, as he had done every morning for the last fifteen years, he remembered, with a mild pang of remorse, that he had not seen Laura since his return.  Without doubt she had expected him last evening, had put on, probably, her most becoming gown to receive him; and the thought of her disappointment entered his heart with a very positive reproach.  This reproach, short lived as it was, had the effect of enkindling his imaginary picture of her; and the eagerness with which he now looked forward to his visit completely crowded from his mind the recollection that, but for his own fault, he might have seen her with as little effort on the evening before.