“He is rich then?”
“What would you? An American! They are it all.”
“Yes, a rich one always wins.”
“How mean you?”
“This: he plays bac at the Capucines. His banks are fructuous.”
“Ah, as to that—” And the first speaker shrugged his shoulders.
A rustle circled through the foyer, men stood aside and nodded affably. The lights took on a fairer glow. “Stay,” murmured the second speaker, “she is there.”
Through the parting crowd Mirette passed with a carriage such as no queen, save perhaps Semiramis, ever possessed. She moved from the hips, her body was erect and unswayed. It was the perfection of artificial grace. Her features were not regular, but there was an expression in them that stirred the pulse. “Je suis l’Amour,” she seemed to say, and to add “prends garde à toi.” As she crossed the room men moistened their lips, and when she had gone they found them still parched.
Mr. Incoul followed her with his eyes. She had not left him unimpressed, but his impression differed from that of his neighbors. In her face his shrewdness had discerned nothing but the animal and the greed of unsatiated appetites. He watched her pass, and stepped from the group in which he had been standing that he might the better follow her movements.
From the foyer she floated on into a side scene, yet not near enough to the stage to be seen by the audience. A few machinists moved aside to let her pass, and as they did so Mr. Incoul saw Lenox Leigh. It was evident that he had been waiting there for her coming. There was a scarf about her neck, and as the young man turned to greet her, she took it off and gave it into his keeping. They whispered together. Beyond, Mr. Incoul could see the tulle of the ballet rising and subsiding to the rhythm of the orchestra. Then came a sudden blare of trumpets, the measure swooned, and as it recovered again the ballet had faded to the back of the stage. Abruptly, as though sprung from a trap-door, a régisseur appeared, and at a signal from him Mirette, with one quick backward stroke to her skirt, bounded from the side scene and fluttered down to the footlights amid a crash and thunder of applause.