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Vain Fortune by George (George Augustus) Moore
page 36 of 203 (17%)
row talking to a young man. He said, 'You mean the woman with the black
hair piled into a point, and fastened with a steel circlet. A face of
sheep-like sensuality. Red lips and a round receding chin. A large bosom,
and two thin arms showing beneath the opera cloak, which she has not yet
thrown from her shoulders. I do not know her--_une laideur attirante_. Many
a man might be interested in her. But do you see the woman in the
stage-box? You would not believe it, but she is sixty, and has only just
begun to speak of herself as an old woman. She kept her figure, and had an
admirer when she was fifty-eight.'

'What has become of him?'

'They quarrelled; two years ago he told her he hoped never to see her ugly
old face again. And that delicate little creature in the box next to
her--that pale diaphanous face?'

'With a young man hanging over her whispering in her ear?'

'Yes. She hates the theatre; it gives her neuralgia; but she attends all
the first nights because her one passion is to be made love to in public.
If her admirer did not hang over her in front of the box just as that man
is doing, she would not tolerate him for a week.'

At that moment the conversation was interrupted by a new-comer, who asked
if he had seen the play when it was first produced.

'Yes,' said Harding; 'I did.' And he continued his search for acquaintances
amid white rows of female backs, necks, and half-seen profiles--amid the
black cloth shoulders cut sharply upon the illumined curtain.

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