“Encore des Anglais!” said some of them, as if that explained all.

Gerald had a very curt way with waiters; and the more obsequious they were, the haughtier he became; and a head-waiter was no more to him than a scullion.  He gave loud-voiced orders in French of which both he and Sophia were proud, and a table was laid for them in a corner near one of the large windows.  Sophia settled herself on the bench of green velvet, and began to ply the ivory fan which Gerald had given her.  It was very hot; all the windows were wide open, and the sounds of the street mingled clearly with the tinkle of the supper-room.  Outside, against a sky of deepest purple, Sophia could discern the black skeleton of a gigantic building; it was the new opera house.

“All sorts here!” said Gerald, contentedly, after he had ordered iced soup and sparkling Moselle.  Sophia did not know what Moselle was, but she imagined that anything would be better than champagne.

Sylvain’s was then typical of the Second Empire, and particularly famous as a supper-room.  Expensive and gay, it provided, with its discreet decorations, a sumptuous scene where lorettes, actresses, respectable women, and an occasional grisette in luck, could satisfy their curiosity as to each other.  In its catholicity it was highly correct as a resort; not many other restaurants in the centre could have successfully fought against the rival attractions of the Bois and the dim groves of the Champs Elysees on a night in August.  The complicated richness of the dresses, the yards and yards of fine stitchery, the endless ruching, the hints, more or less incautious, of nether treasures of embroidered linen; and, leaping over all this to the eye, the vivid colourings of silks and muslins, veils, plumes and flowers, piled as it were pell-mell in heaps on the universal green cushions to the furthest vista of the restaurant, and all multiplied in gilt mirrors—­the spectacle intoxicated Sophia.  Her eyes gleamed.  She drank the soup with eagerness, and tasted the wine, though no desire on her part to like wine could make her like it; and then, seeing pineapples on a large table covered with fruits, she told Gerald that she should like some pineapple, and Gerald ordered one.

She gathered her self-esteem and her wits together, and began to give Gerald her views on the costumes.  She could do so with impunity, because her own was indubitably beyond criticism.  Some she wholly condemned, and there was not one which earned her unreserved approval.  All the absurd fastidiousness of her schoolgirlish provinciality emerged in that eager, affected torrent of remarks.  However, she was clever enough to read, after a time, in Gerald’s tone and features, that she was making a tedious fool of herself.  And she adroitly shifted her criticism from the taste to the work—­she put a strong accent on the word—­ and pronounced that to be miraculous beyond description.  She reckoned that she knew what dressmaking and millinery