"And the sympathetic current did the rest!" added Eugenie Gontier, looking at him tenderly. "Since then you have consecrated to me a part of whatever time is at your disposal, and I assure you that I never have been so happy, nor have felt so flattered, in my life."
"Second act!" came the voice of the call-boy from the corridor.
"Will you return here after the fourth act?" said the actress, rising. "I shall wish to know how you find me in the great scene, and whether there is another princess de Bouillon among the audience—beware of her!"
"You know very well that there is not."
"Not yet, perhaps, but military men are so inconstant! By and by,
Maurice!" she murmured, with a smile.
"By and by, Adrienne!" Henri replied, kissing her hand.
He accompanied her to the steps that led to the stage, and, lounging along the passage that ends at the head of the grand stairway, he entered the theatre and hastened to his usual seat in the third row of the orchestra.
CHAPTER XII
RIVAL BEAUTIES
It was Tuesday, the subscription night; the auditorium was as much the more brilliant as the play was more interesting than on other nights. In one of the proscenium boxes sat the Duchesse de Montgeron with the Comtesse de Lisieux; in another the Vicomtesse de Nointel and Madame Thomery. In the first box on the left Madame Desvanneaux was to be seen, with her husband and her son, the youthful and recently rejected pretender to the hand of Mademoiselle de Vermont.