But there it was, under the same roof.
Christine entered with Madame Larivaudiere. Between shoulders and
broad hats, as through a telescope, she glimpsed in the far distance
the illusive, glowing oblong of the stage; then the silhouetted
conductor and the tops of instruments; then the dark, curved
concentric rows of spectators. Lastly she took in the Promenade, in
which she stood. She surveyed the Promenade with a professional eye.
It instantly shocked her, not as it might have shocked one ignorant
of human nature and history, but by reason of its frigidity, its
constraint, its solemnity, its pretence. In one glance she embraced
all the figures, moving or stationary, against the hedge of shoulders
in front and against the mirrors behind--all of them: the programme
girls, the cigarette girls, the chocolate girls, the cloak-room girls,
the waiters, the overseers, as well as the vivid courtesans and their
clientele in black, tweed, or khaki. With scarcely an exception they
all had the same strange look, the same absence of gesture. They
were northern, blond, self-contained, terribly impassive. Christine
impulsively exclaimed--and the faint cry was dragged out of her, out
of the bottom of her heart, by what she saw:
"My god! How mournful it is!"
Lise Larivaudiere, a stout and benevolent Bruxelloise, agreed with
uncomprehending indulgence.
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