He still found her very good looking but he dared not say so.
Meanwhile the conductor lifted his violin bow and the orchestra attacked the overture.

People still kept coming in; the stir and noise were on the increase.

Among that public, peculiar to first nights and never subject to change, there were little subsections composed of intimate friends, who smilingly forgathered again.

Old first-nighters, hat on head, seemed familiar and quite at ease and kept exchanging salutations.
All Paris was there, the Paris of literature, of finance and of pleasure.

There were many journalists, several authors, a number of stock-exchange people and more courtesans than honest women.