lightly of her at a time when her rebellion against marriage was probably
only theoretic. She had a taste for spinning fine phrases, she drove her
shuttle, and when she came to the end of her yarn she found that society
had turned its back. She tossed her head, declared that at last she
could breathe the sacred air of freedom, and formally announced that she
had embraced an 'intellectual' life. This meant unlimited _camaraderie_
with scribblers and daubers, Hegelian philosophers and Hungarian
pianists. But she has been admired also by a great many really clever
men; there was a time, in fact, when she turned a head as well set on its
shoulders as this one!" And Niedermeyer tapped his forehead. "She has a
great charm, and, literally, I know no harm of her. Yet for all that, I
am not going to speak to her; I am not going near her box. I am going to
leave her to say, if she does me the honour to observe the omission, that
I too have gone over to the Philistines. It's not that; it is that there
is something sinister about the woman. I am too old for it to frighten
me, but I am good-natured enough for it to pain me. Her quarrel with
society has brought her no happiness, and her outward charm is only the
mask of a dangerous discontent. Her imagination is lodged where her
heart should be! So long as you amuse it, well and good; she's radiant.
But the moment you let it flag, she is capable of dropping you without a
pang. If you land on your feet you are so much the wiser, simply; but
there have been two or three, I believe, who have almost broken their
necks in the fall."

"You are reversing your promise," I said, "and giving me an opinion, but
not an anecdote."

"This is my anecdote. A year ago a friend of mine made her acquaintance
in Berlin, and though he was no longer a young man, and had never been
what is called a susceptible one, he took a great fancy to Madame