passed between them,--by the absence of all glow in the smile which had
once lit up her face, as a burst of sunshine lights up a day in spring,
and gives a richer gladness of colour to all its blooms. Once seated
side by side they remained for some moments silent. Indeed, it would
have been rather difficult for anything less than the wonderful
intelligence of lovers between whom no wall can prevent the stolen
interchange of tokens, to have ventured private talk of their own amid
the excited converse which seemed all eyes, all tongues, all ears,
admitting no one present to abstract himself from the common emotion.
Englishmen do not recognise the old classic law which limited the number
of guests, where banquets are meant to be pleasant, to that of the Nine-
Muses. They invite guests so numerous, and so shy of launching talk
across the table, that you may talk to the person next to you not less
secure from listeners than you would be in talking with the stranger whom
you met at a well in the Sahara. It is not so, except on state
occasions, at Paris. Difficult there to retire into solitude with your
next neighbour. The guests collected by Duplessis completed with himself
the number of the Sacred Nine--the host, Valerie, Rochebriant, Graham,
Isaura, Signora Venosta, La Duchesse de Tarascon, the wealthy and high-
born Imperialist, Prince --------, and last and least, one who shall be
nameless.

I have read somewhere, perhaps in one of the books which American
superstition dedicates to the mysteries of Spiritualism, how a gifted
seer, technically styled medium, sees at the opera a box which to other
eyes appears untenanted and empty, but to him is full of ghosts, well
dressed in _costume de-regle_, gazing on the boards and listening to the
music. Like such ghosts are certain beings whom I call Lookers-on.
Though still living, they have no share in the life they survey, they
come as from another world to hear and to see what is passing in ours.