brought out a faint bass _tremolo_, they almost burst into laughter.
. . . But Violetta's acting impressed them.

'They hardly clap that poor girl at all,' said Elena, 'but I like her
a thousand times better than some conceited second-rate celebrity who
would grimace and attitudinise all the while for effect. This girl
seems as though it were all in earnest; look, she pays no attention to
the public.'

Insarov bent over the edge of the box, and looked attentively at
Violetta.

'Yes,' he commented, 'she is in earnest; she's on the brink of the
grave herself.'

Elena was mute.

The third act began. The curtain rose--Elena shuddered at the sight
of the bed, the drawn curtains, the glass of medicine, the shaded
lamps. She recalled the near past. 'What of the future? What of the
present?' flashed across her mind. As though in response to her
thought, the artist's mimic cough on the stage was answered in the box
by the hoarse, terribly real cough of Insarov. Elena stole a glance at
him, and at once gave her features a calm and untroubled expression;
Insarov understood her, and he began himself to smile, and softly to
hum the tune of the song.

But he was soon quiet. Violetta's acting became steadily better, and
freer. She had thrown aside everything subsidiary, everything
superfluous, and _found herself_; a rare, a lofty delight for an