But from that moment she listened no more; and the chorus of the guests, the scene between Ashton and his servant, the grand duet in D major, all were for her as far off as if the instruments had grown less sonorous and the characters more remote. She remembered the games at cards at the druggist’s, and the walk to the nurse’s, the reading in the arbour, the tête-à-tête by the fireside⁠—all that poor love, so calm and so protracted, so discreet, so tender, and that she had nevertheless forgotten. And why had he come back? What combination of circumstances had brought him back into her life? He was standing behind her, leaning with his shoulder against the wall of the box; now and again she felt herself shuddering beneath the hot breath from his nostrils falling upon her hair.

“Does this amuse you?” said he, bending over her so closely that the end of his moustache brushed her cheek. She replied carelessly⁠—

“Oh, dear me, no, not much.”

Then he proposed that they should leave the theatre and go and take an ice somewhere.