then struck him. He growled, but came on. Then she spoke softly to him,
and made that peculiar purr, soft and rich. Now he responded, walked
round her, coming closer, till his body made a half-circle about her, and
his head was at her knees. She dropped her hand on it. Great applause
rang through the building. This play had been quite accidental. But
there lay one secret of the girl's success. She was original; she
depended greatly on the power of the moment for her best effects, and
they came at unexpected times.

It was at this instant that, glancing round the theatre in acknowledgment
of the applause, her eyes rested mechanically on Gaston's box. There was
generally some one important in that box: from a foreign prince to a
young gentleman whose proudest moment was to take off his hat in the Bois
to the queen of a lawless court. She had tired of being introduced to
princes. What could it mean to her? And for the young bloods, whose
greatest regret was that they could not send forth a daughter of joy into
the Champs Elysee in her carriage, she had ever sent them about their
business. She had no corner of pardon for them. She kissed her lions,
she hugged the lion's cub that rode back and forth with her to the
menagerie day by day--her companion in her modest apartments; but sell
one of these kisses to a young gentleman of Paris, whose ambition was to
master all the vices, and then let the vices master him!--she had not
come to that, though, as she said in some bitter moments, she had come
far.

Count Ploare--there was nothing in that. A blase man of the world, who
had found it all not worth the bothering about, neither code nor people--
he saw in this rich impetuous nature a new range of emotions, a brief
return to the time when he tasted an open strong life in Algiers, in
Tahiti. And he would laugh at the world by marrying her--yes, actually