"In Vienna?" said the dancer. "Oh! that was a small performance--that was at first--later, when I travelled with my husband, the Marchese Carini, je n'ai jamais travaillé except in St. Petersburg, Paris, London and Baden-Baden."
"Ah!" says Linda; the conversation pauses.
Papa Harfink, leaning somewhat forward, his heels under his chair, rests in a low arm-chair, and monotonously strokes his leg from the knee upwards and back again.
And Felix? Pressed tightly into a dark corner, where the hope of being forgotten and overlooked chains him, he stands motionless. As light perspiration which does not cool, but rather burns, moistens his whole body, the blood sings in his ears, his tongue cleaves to his teeth. He has not self-possession enough to hear her, he has not the courage to look at her; she floats before his mind, the most seductive siren, the most bewitching woman that ever, trifling and playing with a man, ruined his honor. He still dreads the disturbing might of her beauty. Curiosity compels him to gaze at her; he looks and does not trust his eyes. Where is the Juanita? Near his wife he sees a yellow, bloated woman, prematurely old, tastelessly dressed, squeezed into a black moiré antique gown, with folds under her round eyes, little fan-shaped wrinkles on her temples, and black down about the corners of her mouth. Common, fat, awkward, she sits there, a double chin resting on her fat bosom, her hands clasped over a lace-edged handkerchief in her lap! Felix cannot believe his eyes. That must be a mistake--that cannot be Juanita! Then, beneath the hem of her gown, he sees a tiny foot in a black satin shoe, and now he knows that this is Juanita!
He notices a light brown mole on her neck--it disgusts him, but then he remembers how this mole had once pleased him, how often he had jokingly kissed it! His cheeks burn--he has lost his last illusion--the whole vulgarity of the temptress to whom he had yielded is pitilessly exposed to him. Involuntarily he makes a movement. Papa Harfink discovers him. "Ah, Felix," he cries, already somewhat out of temper, "are you hiding from me? I should think," he adds, relying upon the power of his millions, "that such a father-in-law as I is not to be despised."
Slowly Felix advances.
"My husband," says Linda to the dancer. But the latter's face has taken on a prepossessing smile, and with the confidential expression which appeals to old times, she says, "I know him already, tout à fait un ami from my débutante period; is it not so?"
She gives him her hand.
The hand, only covered by a lace mitt, is flabby, and as Juanita, half rising, presses this hand against the lips of Felix, who is bowing to her, his face changes, plainly expresses disgust, and he lets the hand fall unkissed.
Juanita trembles with rage. "Let us go," screams she--"let us go! Oh, Sir Baron, you think that I am only a dancer--and--and----"