The opera that night was Carmen, which peculiarly suited her phase of mind. There is no other which so thoroughly embodies the spirit of recklessness, the triumph of the senses, the frank, impulsive, untrammeled enjoyment of life and of living. To be sure, there is the tragic ending—but before that, three acts of brilliant melody, glowing with color, with warm, sensuous pleasure.
Gerard was waiting in the box when they arrived. On the stage Carmen—that ideal Carmen of whom Mérimée dreamed and Bizet set to music—had just appeared upon the scene of Don Jose's misfortune, and was warbling, with bewitching abandon, the notes of the Habanera.
Gerard's face, which had an anxious look, brightened wonderfully, radiantly, as the two women entered the box. He murmured eagerly a few grateful words in Elizabeth's ear, and took the seat directly behind her, which he did not abandon, even though his predictions were justified, and Mrs. Van Antwerp's box was filled, after the first act, with men who looked anything but pleased at finding that particular place monopolized. Mrs. Bobby, however, seemed delighted to entertain them, was gracious, charming and piquante, and elicited from a stern dowager in the next box severe criticisms on the wiles of young married women, and their reprehensible manner of diverting to themselves the attention due to the young girls under their charge.
Elizabeth hardly noticed the men who entered the box. She sat with eyes fixed upon the stage, upon that intensely real music drama which she had seen many times already, but which never lost its fascination; yet acutely conscious all the while through every fibre of her being of Gerard's presence, of his watching her, of his bending over her, now and again, to murmur a word in her ear. And as for him, she had appealed to him most, perhaps, at least to a certain side of his nature, that afternoon in her pale languor; and yet he could not but feel his senses thrilled, his pulses throb, when she was so warmly, vividly, humanly beautiful as she was to-night. For the moment he was carried beyond himself, his doubts dispelled, or at least forgotten.
And yet, as the evening wore on, some subtle influence in the music or the play seemed to recall them. At the end of the second act she turned to him, the strains of the Toreador song still ringing in her ear, and felt, insensibly a sudden lack of sympathy, a cloud that seemed to have drifted between them. His brows were knit, his face moody.
"You don't like it!" she said, staring up at him with wondering, disappointed eyes.
"What, the opera?" He started as if his thoughts had been elsewhere. "No, I don't like it," he said, frankly. "It jars upon me somehow, brings up memories"—he paused. "Oh, it's some drop of Puritan blood, I suppose," he went on, impatiently, "that asserts itself in me. I can't view the thing from an artistic standpoint. I can't forget for a moment what a heartless creature the woman is. When I see her ruining men's lives, luring them on, turning from one to another—it's too realistic—there are too many women like that"—He was speaking low and bitterly, with a strange vehemence, but suddenly he broke off, with a short laugh. "Oh, it's absurd," he said, "to take a thing like that seriously."
Elizabeth did not smile. She leaned back in her chair as if she were suddenly weary. "Poor Carmen!" she said, in a low voice. "You're very hard on her." She held up her fan before her eyes, as if the light hurt them. A shadow seemed to fall upon her beauty, effacing its color and brilliance, bringing out again into strong relief the dark rings under the eyes, the lines about the mouth. She sat in silence for awhile, but suddenly she turned to him.
"I'm going to shock you, I'm afraid," she said, "but—do you know—somehow I can't help seeing the other side. What is a woman to do, if she changes against her will? Is she to abide always, inexorably, by the results of a mistake?" A note of passionate feeling thrilled her voice, she fixed her eyes anxiously, intently, upon Gerard. "There are so many questions that might arise," she went on, eagerly, as he did not answer at once. "One might, for instance, make a promise—a very solemn promise, and find out afterwards that it was—a mistake, that it would ruin one's whole life to keep it; and—and one might break it, and the other person might think himself very much injured; and yet—would you think the woman in that case so very much to blame?"
Gerard thought he understood. With the conviction came a sense of passionate relief, which yet he hesitated, with the fastidious scruples of a proud and honorable man, to grasp in its entirety.