“Des jaunets” (yellow boys), cried the youth, his sharp face lighting up, and in a flash he had vanished with the tickets.

“You see he knows me, Frank,” said Oscar, with the childish pleasure of gratified vanity.

“Yes,” I replied drily, “not an acquaintance to be proud of, I should think.”

“I don’t agree with you, Frank,” he said, resenting my tone, “did you notice his eyes?  He is one of the most beautiful boys I have ever seen; an exact replica of Emilienne D’Alencon,[24] I call him Jules D’Alencon, and I tell her he must be her brother.  I had them both dining with me once and the boy is finer than the girl, his skin far more beautiful.

“By the way,” he went on, as we were walking up the Avenue de l’Opera, “why should we not see Emilienne; why should she not sup with us, and you could compare them?  She is playing at Olympia, near the Grand Hotel.  Let’s go and compare Aspasia and Agathon, and for once I shall be Alcibiades, and you the moralist, Socrates.”

“I would rather talk to you,” I replied.

“We can talk afterwards, Frank, when all the stars come out to listen; now is the time to live and enjoy.”

“As you will,” I said, and we went to the Music Hall and got a box, and he wrote a little note to Emilienne D’Alencon, and she came afterwards to supper with us.  Though her face was pretty she was pre-eminently dull and uninteresting without two ideas in her bird’s head.  She was all greed and vanity, and could talk of nothing but the hope of getting an engagement in London:  could he help her, or would Monsieur, referring to me, as a journalist get her some good puffs in advance?  Oscar promised everything gravely.

While we were supping inside, Oscar caught sight of the boy passing along the Boulevard.  At once he tapped on the window, loud enough to attract his attention.  Nothing loth, the boy came in, and the four of us had supper together—­a strange quartette.

“Now, Frank,” said Oscar, “compare the two faces and you will see the likeness,” and indeed there was in both the same Greek beauty—­the same regularity of feature, the same low brow and large eyes, the same perfect oval.

“I am telling my friend,” said Oscar to Emilienne in French, “how alike you two are, true brother and sister in beauty and in the finest of arts, the art of living,” and they both laughed.

“The boy is better looking,” he went on to me in English.  “Her mouth is coarse and hard; her hands common, while the boy is quite perfect.”

“Rather dirty, don’t you think?” I could not help remarking.

“Dirty, of course, but that’s nothing; nothing is so immaterial as colouring; form is everything, and his form is perfect, as exquisite as the David of Donatello.  That’s what he’s like, Frank, the David of Donatello,” and he pulled his jowl, delighted to have found the painting word.

As soon as Emilienne saw that we were talking of the boy, her interest in the conversation vanished, even more quickly than her appetite.  She had to go, she said suddenly; she was so sorry, and the discontented curiosity of her look gave place again to the smirk of affected politeness.