Page:Plays by Jacinto Benavente - Second series (IA playsbyjacintobe00bena).pdf/105

. Baroness, your lorgnettes… One of the maids. Amusing, is it not? Ha, ha! Did you hear that?

. Yes, a kiss. There can be no doubt of it.

. A kiss? Your Highness, retire!

. Enough… Your secretary is the only person who is enjoying himself this evening. It is the same everywhere, in society as in life. The official entertainment is staged in the drawing-room, where the boredom is polite; the real entertainment goes on behind the scenes.

. Why exchange it for the public view? Permit me to remain at your side; my happiness is complete. I shall not speak to you, but together we shall gaze into the sky, we shall listen to the mingling of music and kisses, while our souls blend in the dark silences and become mute as the tears well up in our eyes in a transport of love so tremendous that it unites in its tremor the fulness of life and the fleeting premonition of death.

. Poetic, is it not? Why, there are tears in your eyes! Are you much affected?

. Do you doubt it?

. No, no. Let us withdraw from the balcony and return to the concert. You alarm me.

. I do? In what way?

. I feel that I am becoming affected myself, without knowing why. I could easily cry, yet I could not tell you the reason. I am unwilling that my life should be influenced by this night of faultless blue and the thrum of music afar off, or determined by a few idle words, which, if I had heard them in broad daylight, in the midst of company, I should have laughed at—as I laugh at them now.

. Your Highness! Helena!

. Sir!

. Don't be alarmed. Baroness. The