room.

On all the faces in it, except one, she perceived intent expressions. A
sleek and plump man, with hanging cheeks, a hooked nose, and hair
slightly tinged with grey and parted in the middle, was the exception. He
sat in a low chair, pouting his lips, playing with his single eyeglass,
and looking as sulky as an ill-conditioned school-boy. Once or twice he
crossed and uncrossed his short legs with a sort of abrupt violence, laid
his fat, white hands on the arms of the chair, lifted them, glanced at
his rosy and shining nails, and frowned. Then he shut his little eyes so
tightly that the skin round them became wrinkled, and, stretching out his
feet, seemed almost angrily endeavouring to fall asleep.

A tall young man, who was sitting alone not far off, cast a glance of
contempt at him, and then, as if vexed at having bestowed upon him even
this slight attention, leaned forward, listening with eagerness to the
soprano voice. The little dark woman observed him carefully above the
scarlet feathers of her fan, which she now held quite still. His face was
lean and brown. His eyes were long and black, heavy-lidded, and shaded by
big lashes which curled upward. His features were good. The nose and chin
were short and decided, but the mouth was melancholy, almost weak. On his
upper lip grew a short moustache, turned up at the ends. His body was
slim and muscular.

After watching him for a little while the dark woman looked again at the
elderly man beside her, and then quickly back to the young fellow. She
seemed to be comparing the two attentions, of age and of youth. Perhaps
she found something horrible in the process for she suddenly lost her
expression of sparkling and birdlike sarcasm, and bending her arm, as if
overcome with lassitude, she let her fan drop on her knees, and stared