"Which proves," said Ernest, "that she is paradoxically ugly."
"I pity them, if they are seeking four husbands," said George; "and if they are married—I pity their four husbands."
Whilst my noisy companions were trying to discover their ideal fright in the corner of the box on our right, I felt an inexplicable contraction of my heart—a chill pass through my whole body; my silly gayety was by some unseen influence suddenly changed into sadness—I felt my eyes fill with tears. The only way I could account for this revulsion in my feelings was the growing conviction that I was disgracing myself in a den of malefactors of both sexes. My fit of melancholy was interrupted very opportunely by the choir chanting the hymn of Bacchus, that antique wonder, found by Mendelssohn in the ruins of the Temple of Victory.
When the play was over, I timidly proposed that we should remain in our box till the crowd had passed out; but our Greek statues would not hear to it, as they had determined upon a triumphal exit. I was obliged to yield.
The bronze statue despotically seized my arm, and dragged me toward the stair. I felt as if I had a cold lizard clinging to me. I was seized with that chilly sensation always felt by nervous people when they come in contact with reptiles.
I recalled the disastrous day that I was shipwrecked on the island of Eaei-Namove, and compelled to marry Dai-Natha, the king's daughter, in order to escape the unpleasant alternative of being eaten alive by her father. On the staircase of the Odeon I regretted Dai-Natha.
In the midst of the dense crowd that blockaded the stairway, I heard a frightened cry that made the blood freeze in my veins. There was but one woman in the world blest with so sweet a voice—musical even when raised in terror.
If I were surrounded by crashing peals of thunder, rushing waters and yells of wild beasts, I still could recognise, through the din of all this, the cry of a beloved woman. I am gifted with that marvellous perception of hearing, derived from the sixth sense, the sense of love.
Irene de Chateaudun had uttered that cry of alarm—Take care, my dear! she had exclaimed with that accent of fright that it is impossible to disguise—in that tone that will be natural in spite of all the reserve that circumstances would impose, Take care, my dear!
Some one near me said that a door-keeper had struck a lady on the shoulder with a panel of a portable door which he was carrying across the passage-way. By standing on my toes I could just catch a glimpse of the board being balanced in the air over every one's head. My eyes could not see the woman who had uttered this cry, but my ears told me it was Irene de Chateaudun.