"And here you may think of ladies in voluminous skirts and tight waists and high-heeled slippers, who made love to gay gentlemen under this rococo ceiling and prinked before these mirrors." Stephen stopped before a mirror and looked into the dark eyes reflected there. In imagination he kissed Ellen's red lips. For him as well as for her it was a golden hour.
"Do you suppose I'll ever see it again?" asked Ellen sadly.
There was a savage defiance in Stephen's "Why not, pray?"
Ellen sighed; she had expected her father to show her the world, and she had been disappointed. Then Stephen's closer touch restored her content.
"Le Prophète" is not the greatest of operas, but the greatest tenor and one of the greatest sopranos were to sing and there were new and gorgeous stage-settings--it would serve as a good primer for Ellen. Stephen was amused when he thought of Fetzer and the display of women's bodies in the boxes, pitiful, thin bodies, and unpleasant fat bodies, and watching, he read her thoughts. Fetzer had, however, an advantage, she needed to look with but one eye, and that she fixed upon the stage where she found plenty to occupy and amaze her.
On Sunday he took his guests to service in an unfinished cathedral, so that Ellen might comprehend mediæval deliberation and understand how Chartres and Amiens were built--he expected to show her Chartres and Amiens--and in the afternoon he took her alone to hear a Russian pianist. She sat quietly and for a while he forgot even her. When he turned toward her at the end of a number, she was looking at him.
"This is best of all," said she, to his supreme content.
They walked down Fifth Avenue in the late sunshine. It seemed to Ellen that every one was happy, but none so happy as she.
"But it seems wicked!" she declared suddenly.
Stephen recognized a lingering impression of early teachings. None of that, he was determined, should be left in Ellen! He needed no narrow creed, either for himself or for her.
"That is nonsense. That feeling is wicked!"
Then Ellen asked a question which was prompted by a hunger to share his interests, and which might have been invented by the deliberate and cunning art of a much older woman.
"You said you were going to talk to a young surgeon yesterday morning. Did you?"