Sophie Grignault, surnamed Florine by a form of baptism common in theatres, had made her first appearances, in spite of her beauty, on very inferior boards.  Her success and her money she owed to Raoul Nathan.  This association of their two fates, usual enough in the dramatic and literary world, did no harm to Raoul, who kept up the outward conventions of a man of the world.  Moreover, Florine’s actual means were precarious; her revenues came from her salary and her leaves of absence, and barely sufficed for her dress and her household expenses.  Nathan gave her certain perquisites which he managed to levy as critic on several of the new enterprises of industrial art.  But although he was always gallant and protecting towards her, that protection had nothing regular or solid about it.

This uncertainty, and this life on a bough, as it were, did not alarm Florine; she believed in her talent, and she believed in her beauty.  Her robust faith was somewhat comical to those who heard her staking her future upon it, when remonstrances were made to her.

“I can have income enough when I please,” she was wont to say; “I have invested fifty francs on the Grand-livre.”

No one could ever understand how it happened that Florine, handsome as she was, had remained in obscurity for seven years; but the fact is, Florine was enrolled as a supernumerary at thirteen years of age, and made her debut two years later at an obscure boulevard theatre.  At fifteen, neither beauty nor talent exist; a woman is simply all promise.

She was now twenty-eight,—­the age at which the beauties of a French woman are in their glory.  Painters particularly admired the lustre of her white shoulders, tinted with olive tones about the nape of the neck, and wonderfully firm and polished, so that the light shimmered over them as it does on watered silk.  When she turned her head, superb folds formed about her neck, the admiration of sculptors.  She carried on this triumphant neck the small head of a Roman empress, the delicate, round, and self-willed head of Pompeia, with features of elegant correctness, and the smooth forehead of a woman who drives all care away and all reflection, who yields easily, but is capable of balking like a mule, and incapable at such times of listening to reason.  That forehead, turned, as it were, with one cut of the chisel, brought out the beauty of the golden hair, which was raised in front, after the Roman fashion, in two equal masses, and twisted up behind the head to prolong the line of the neck, and enhance that whiteness by its beautiful color.  Black and delicate eyebrows, drawn by a Chinese brush, encircled the soft eyelids, which were threaded with rosy fibres.  The pupils of the eyes, extremely bright, though striped with brown rays, gave to her glance the cruel fixity of a beast of prey, and betrayed the cold maliciousness of the courtesan.  The eyes were gray, fringed with black lashes,—­a charming contrast, which made