Page:The Novels and Tales of Henry James, Volume 2 (New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907).djvu/365

THE AMERICAN and steamboats, harmonised with his relish for bold processes and made hospitality the potent thing it should ideally be. A few evenings before the occasion of which I speak he had invited several ladies and gentlemen to the opera to listen to the young and wondrous Adelina Patti—a party which included Miss Dora Finch. It befell, however, that Miss Dora Finch, sitting near him in the box, discoursed brilliantly, not only during the entr'actes but during many of the finest portions of the performance, so that he had really come away with an irritated sense that the new rare diva had a thin, shrill voice and that her roulades resembled giggles. After this he promised himself to go for a while to the opera alone.

When the curtain had fallen on the first act of "Don Giovanni" he turned round in his place to observe the audience. Presently, in one of the boxes, he perceived Urbain de Bellegarde and his wife. The little Marquise swept the house very busily with a glass, and Newman, supposing she saw him, determined to go and bid her good-evening. M. de Bellegarde leaned against a column, motionless, looking straight in front of him, one hand in the breast of his white waistcoat and the other resting his hat on his thigh. Newman was about to leave his place when he noticed in that obscure region devoted to the small boxes which in French are called, not inaptly, bathtubs, from their promoting at least immersion through the action of the pores, a face which even the dim light and the distance could not make wholly indistinct. It was the face of a young and pretty woman, crowned with an arrangement of pink roses and 335