in a tone in which there was no gratitude but only surprise. I must have
been idle indeed to take the trouble to remark on such slight evidence
that the voice was very charming and when the performers resumed
their seats I shifted my position slightly in order not to have that
particular performer hidden from me by the little man with the beard who
conducted, and who might for all I know have been her father, but whose
real mission in life was to be a model for the Zangiacomo of Victory.
Having got a clear line of sight I naturally (being idle) continued to
look at the girl through all the second part of the programme. The shape
of her dark head inclined over the violin was fascinating, and, while
resting between the pieces of that interminable programme she was, in
her white dress and with her brown hands reposing in her lap, the very
image of dreamy innocence. The mature, bad-tempered woman at the
piano might have been her mother, though there was not the slightest
resemblance between them. All I am certain of in their personal relation
to each other is that cruel pinch on the upper part of the arm. That I
am sure I have seen! There could be no mistake. I was in too idle a mood
to imagine such a gratuitous barbarity. It may have been playfulness,
yet the girl jumped up as if she had been stung by a wasp. It may have
been playfulness. Yet I saw plainly poor "dreamy innocence" rub gently
the affected place as she filed off with the other performers down the
middle aisle between the marble tables in the uproar of voices, the
rattling of dominoes through a blue atmosphere of tobacco smoke. I
believe that those people left the town next day.

Or perhaps they had only migrated to the other big cafe, on the other
side of the Place de la Comedie. It is very possible. I did not go
across to find out. It was my perfect idleness that had invested the
girl with a peculiar charm, and I did not want to destroy it by
any superfluous exertion. The receptivity of my indolence made the