Page:A Leaf in the Storm.djvu/157

150 I had never seen her sweet eyes clearer or the rose bloom brighter on her cheeks. I thought it was the mountain air perhaps which was too strong and made her listless.

Of course I had to leave her very often. I could not anyway avoid it. We were the only company at Spa: and to amuse the fastidious audience for which we played, we were obliged to change our little pieces almost every night.

This entailed on us great fatigue, and most of all on me, because the kind of pieces that we now performed were not such as I had acted in when I had gone about with my little wooden theatre; which, indeed, I had written chiefly myself. The studying so many new characters, and the rehearsal of them, occupied much of my day-time, and left me but little leisure as the season advanced.

Of an evening she would always go with me to the theatre, and sit in the little baignoire which they assigned her; occasionally, when I joined her in the entr'actes, I found Carolyié there, but not very often. He somewhat avoided me. I supposed that I might have given him some cause for offence in my persistent refusal of the many invitation which he had pressed upon me in the beginning of the summer.

Once, too, in quite the earliest days of his