CHAPTER XXV
SCENES OF BEAUTY AND OF LOVE
This evening the exercises were devoted to the concept Beauty. They were to begin with a concert; but not a concert of tones, rather of colors and lines—charm for the eye, intoxication for the sense of sight—the delight of seeing, carried to ecstasy.
The hall was only faintly lighted. Toker and his guests were not as usual on the platform; a white screen surrounded by a golden frame filled the background. Franka sat in the box that she had occupied on the evening of Helmer’s address. But this time Helmer was with her. He had escorted her into the hall, having been, as usual, seated next her at the dinner-table. The two had not had much opportunity to talk together, as some one opposite had engaged Chlodwig in an urgent conversation, and Franka, on her side, was taken possession of by Gwendoline—who had also accompanied them to the box. In the background sat Frau von Rockhaus and Malhof.
Franka was scanning the hall with her opera-glass.
“Are you looking for some one?” asked Helmer; “he is sitting there in the lower tier at the right.”
Franka’s glass followed the indicated direction, and she caught sight of Victor Adolph, who had turned round and was likewise searching the audience with his lorgnette. The two glasses met and the prince bowed. Franka answered the greeting and blushed, as Helmer saw only too well.
“I had a long talk with the prince to-day,” he said; “he is a fine fellow.”
“Who—the German king’s son?” broke in Gwendoline; “he pleases me, too, immensely; and if he were not so evidently taken with our Miss Garlett, I should have a good flirtation with him.”
On the signal for beginning the programme—three loud peals on a bell—a tall figure of a woman in the costume of a Greek Muse stepped forward and began to speak:—
Still through the hall the golden bell-tone vibrates low!