There was nothing to explain why Miss Warriner, in particular, should
have so disturbed him; the English women seated about her were as
fair; she showed no great sorrow in her face; her beauty was not of
the type which carried observers by assault. And yet not one of the
many beautiful women who on one night or another passed before
Edouard in the soft light of the red shades had ever stirred him so
strangely, had ever depressed him with such a tender melancholy, and
filled his soul--the soul of a Hungarian and a musician--with such
loneliness and unrest. He knew that, so far as he was concerned, she
was as distant as the Venus in the Louvre; she was, for him, a
beautiful, unapproachable statue, placed, by some social convention,
upon a pedestal.
As he looked at her he felt hotly the degradation of his silly
uniform, of the striped sash around his waist, the tawdry braids, and
the tasselled boots. He felt as he had often felt before, but now
more keenly than ever, the prostitution of his art in this temple of
the senses, this home of epicures, where people met to feast their
eyes and charm their palates. He could not put his feelings into
words, and he knew that if by some upheaval of the social world he
should be thrown into her presence he would still be bound, he would
not be able to speak or write what she inspired in him.
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