turning towards me from the mirror where he was brushing his hair."
Suffice it he is a millionaire, and I get summoned to drink his wine.
Some say he is in politics, others that he deals with stocks; for me it
is enough that he deals with the dance and good table. Is it not
magnificent to so live? I would sell my soul for fifteen years of it."

The remark set me thinking a moment, but it only complicated the charm
of delivering oneself over to sensations.

We met Grace at the head of the staircase. She had never looked more
Venus-like than in this fairy glow, with a plant-filled window behind
her, opening out into the summer darkness. The music of a waltz of
Strauss was rising from below, and I felt a wonderful thrill as she
again took my arm.

Our respects being paid to the hostess, Madame Picault, Grace gave me a
couple of dances on her card, and introducing me to a slender young
girl, with pretty eyes, and two very long, crisp plaits of hair, went
off on the arm of some one else.

As my father's plan of education had taken me hitherto wholly into
English society, so far as into any, the unique feeling of being a
stranger to my own race came with full force upon me for a moment and I
stood silent beside the pretty eyes and looked at the scene. The walls
were a perfect gallery of sublime landscapes, and small pictures heavily
set; four royal chandeliers threw illumination over a maze of flowered
trains and flushed complexions, moving through a stately "Lancers,"
under a ceiling of dark paintings, divided as if framed, by heavy gilded
mouldings, like the ceiling of a Venetian Palace.