I contested the proposition.  The irony of this peculiarly painful revel lay in the air of gaiety it seemed necessary to maintain.  A miserable business is civilisation!

“Did you ever hear of a woman getting youth out of such a bargain?” she retorted with some vehemence.

“As women systematically underpay cabmen,” said I, “so do they try to underpay the devil; and he is one too many for them.”

“I am afraid,” said Pasquale, “that the old days of shrewd bargains are over.  There is a glut in the soul-market and they only fetch the price of old bones.”

“He is talking foolish things that I do not understand,” said Carlotta, putting her hand on my arm.

“It is called sham cynicism, my dear,” said I, “and we all ought to be ashamed of ourselves.”

“What do you like best to talk about?” Judith asked sweetly.

“Myself.  And so does everybody,” replied Carlotta.

We laughed, and for a time talk ceased to be allusive.  But later, over our coffee, while the band was playing loudly some new American march, and Carlotta and Pasquale were laughing together, Judith drew near me.

“You did not answer my question about those two, Marcus.”

My fingers trembled as I lit a fresh cigarette.

“He is not a man to whom any woman’s destiny should be entrusted.”

“And is she a woman on whom a man should stake his life’s happiness?”

“God knows,” said I, setting my teeth.

It was not an enjoyable dinner-party.  I longed for the evening to be over, to have Carlotta safe back with me at home.  I felt a curious dread of the Empire.

We arrived there towards the end of the first ballet.  Carlotta, as soon as she had taken her seat, leaned both elbows on the front of the box and surrendered her senses to the stage.  Pasquale talked to Judith.  Wishing for a few moments alone I left the box and sauntered moodily along the promenade behind the First Circle.  The occupants were either leaning over the partitions and watching the spectacle or sitting with drink before them at the little marble tables at the back.  The gaudy, gilded, tobacco-smoke and humanity-filled theatre seemed to be unreal, the stage but a phantom cloud effect.  I wondered why I, a creature from the concrete world, was there.  I had an insane impulse to fly from it all, to go out into the streets, and wander, wander for ever, away from the world.  I was walking along the promenade, lost in this lunacy, when I stumbled against a fellow-promenader and the shock brought me to my senses.  It was an elderly, obese Oriental wearing a red fez.  He had a long nose and small, crafty eyes, and was deeply pitted with smallpox.  I made profuse apologies and he accepted them with suavity.  It then occurring to me that I was be having in a discourteous and abjectly absurd manner, I made my way back to the box.  I drew a chair to Judith’s side.