This association of their two fates, usual enough in the dramatic and literary world, did no harm to Raoul, who kept up the outward conventions of a man of the world.

Moreover, Florine's actual means were precarious; her revenues came from her salary and her leaves of absence, and barely sufficed for her dress and her household expenses.

Nathan gave her certain perquisites which he managed to levy as critic on several of the new enterprises of industrial art.

But although he was always gallant and protecting towards her, that protection had nothing regular or solid about it.
This uncertainty, and this life on a bough, as it were, did not alarm Florine; she believed in her talent, and she believed in her beauty.
Her robust faith was somewhat comical to those who heard her staking her future upon it, when remonstrances were made to her.
"I can have income enough when I please," she was wont to say; "I have invested fifty francs on the Grand-livre." No one could ever understand how it happened that Florine, handsome as she was, had remained in obscurity for seven years; but the fact is, Florine was enrolled as a supernumerary at thirteen years of age, and made her debut two years later at an obscure boulevard theatre.

At fifteen, neither beauty nor talent exist; a woman is simply all promise.
She was now twenty-eight,--the age at which the beauties of a French woman are in their glory.