If he had told her directly what he was thinking, he would have said: "In that dress, with a princess only too well known to everyone, to show yourself at the theater is equivalent not merely to acknowledging your position as a fallen woman, but is flinging down a challenge to society, that is to say, cutting yourself off from it forever.

" He could not say that to her.

" But how can she fail to see it, and what is going on in her?" he said to himself.