"The Duc de Mora is coming?"

"Certainly. It is for him that the party is given; to bring about a
meeting between him and Jansoulet."

"And you think that the duke and Mlle. Ruys----"

"Where have you come from? It is an intrigue known to all Paris. The
affair dates from the last exhibition, for which she did a bust of him."

"And the duchess?"

"Bah! it is not her first experience of that sort. Ah! there is Mme.
Jenkins going to sing."

There was a movement in the drawing-room, a more violent swaying of the
crowd near the door, and conversation ceased for a moment. Paul de
Gery breathed. What he had just heard had oppressed his heart. He felt
himself reached, soiled, by this mud flung in handfuls over the ideal
which in his own mind he had formed of that splendid adolescence,
matured by the sun of Art to so penetrating a charm. He moved away
a little, changed his place. He feared to hear again some whispered
infamy. Mme. Jenkins's voice did him good, a voice that was famous in
the drawing-rooms of Paris and that in spite of all its magnificence had
nothing theatrical about it, but seemed an emotional utterance vibrating
over unstudied sonorities. The singer, a woman of forty or forty-five,
had splendid ash-blond hair, delicate, rather nerveless features, a
striking expression of kindness. Still good-looking, she was dressed
in the costly taste of a woman who has not given up the thought of