The Devil

Before the ballet was over, he became bored with it. Too long! Enough is as good as a feast. They were singing now as well as dancing.

The massive, voluminously quiescent sensation induced by the liqueurs had passed away, and in its place came increased weariness of the spectacular entertainment. The light, and the music, and the half-naked women, who still danced and pranced, were affecting his nerves unpleasantly now. He looked away from the stage, and stared at the audience. Behind him, as he knew, there were all those hussies with painted faces offering themselves for hire. And wherever he looked, he seemed to see evidences of amorous traffic. When you examined it attentively, the entire audience seemed to resolve itself into an endless repetition of the same small group of two persons of two sexes, each soliciting the other's favor; a man and a woman sitting close together, the couple, the factorial two--everywhere, all round the circle, along the three visible rows of stalls, and again in the private boxes. Those wealthy men in the boxes were unquestionably accompanied by their mistresses and not by their wives or sisters. Through the vibrating music and the super-heated atmosphere, on a river of vivid light, they were all drifting fast toward the night of love that each pair had arranged for itself.

And they too would have their night of love. He looked at his wife, and felt his pulses stirred as much now as in the far-off days of courtship--more, because then there was no experience of facts to strengthen his imagination. He gently pressed her arm, and thrilled at the mere contact. She was leaning back, fanning herself with her program, and he observed the roundness and whiteness of her neck, the flesh of her shoulder showing through the transparent sleeve of her blouse, the moistness and warmth of her open lips.

Yet she had told him at Rodchurch Road Station that she was attractive only to his eyes, and that she could never again arouse desire in other men. What utter nonsense! She was simply adorable.