“And the curtain is at eight,” she added. “We must hurry!”
They were there when the curtain rose, and were soon under the spell of the enchanting music with which Saint-Saëns has clothed the old Scripture allegory of man’s weakness and woman’s perfidy—a drama which is re-enacted daily wherever men and women live, and so touches a chord in every heart. Surely no lovelier song was ever written than Delila’s
Mon coeur s’ouvre à ta voix comme s’ouvrent les fleurs
Aux baisers de l’aurore....
“My heart opens at thy voice as the flowers open to the kisses of the dawn....”
And no more effective scene was ever staged than that of the blinded Samson, chained like a beast to the mill, and pushing it round and round. So the great drama swept on to the supreme moment when Samson, praying for strength, bends his back between the mighty pillars of the temple and brings it crashing down upon the heads of his enemies.
There was to be a ballet afterwards to a Chopin suite, and when Selden and his companion came back from a turn in the foyer, they found that the front row of the orchestra, which had been empty during the opera, was filling up with distinguished-looking old men, most of them with the rosette of the Legion gleaming red on their coats.
Rénee nodded toward them with a smile.
“You see,” she said; “it is as I told you. They come for the ballet only. But look—who is that? Is it not the Baron Lappo?”
“So it is,” said Selden, and they watched him take his seat, a little thinner, perhaps, with the passage of the months, a little greyer, but still erect, alert. “I wonder what he is doing in Paris? Shall we waylay him after the ballet?”