singing "THE KING OF THULE", and sitting at Marguerite's spinning wheel. And Faust eagerly promising his soul to the devil if thereby he could win her love. Incredibly lovely as Marianne looked now, Leone would have offered her own soul for a single kiss!

Did she only imagine that Marianne's dark eyes for one brief moment had looked into her own with the same tenderness as before?

When the curtain went down on the first act Paul groaned. "Four more acts to sit through!"

And Leone thought-I won't see her any more after this is over. She glanced again at the beloved name on the program. Marguerite-Marianne Foster, and then at the less familiar name of the woman who was playing the part of Seibela man's part. Was there-could there be more between them than their part in an opera together? It was possible that Marianne had found someone else now who wanted her. Someone who shared her interests.

But during the opera Leone was Faust, she was Seibel-she was everyone who loved Marguerite!

During the second intermission Paul made the remark:

"Why did they give the role of Seibel to a woman? How can anyone expect one woman to make love to another?"

"But," Leone argued, angry at him. "Seibel's part has always been sung by a woman."

And then another tremendous pain shook her body. She shouldn't stay here any longer-even if the baby wasn't due for another month yet. She stifled any sound that would betray her suffering and since the lights were out again Paul hadn't been able to see her face. She must stay close to Marianne as long as she could. She might never see her again or be close to her.

The remaining acts of the opera passed too quickly, and Leone knew that after the final curtain calls she must join the host of other admirers who would try to get to Marianne's dressing room. Reverent fingers eager to touch the dress she wore. Bold young voices demanding her autograph. Vicious tongues ready to gossip about her latest affair with some leading tenor or-. And she, Leone, knowing that Marianne made engagements only to break them-that her life too, had become a camouflage.

She thought again of the child she and Paul were going to have. To some parents it wouldn't matter if their offspring happened to be a son or a daughter but to each of them it mattered. Maybe this other unrecognized desire was in every woman who wanted a girl baby more than a boy-in every man who was disappointed when his wife presented him with a daughter instead of a son, Sappho had had a husband and a cherished daughter and yet she had loved women! Had her life too been a camouflage?

And now there was the applause that seemed as if it never would end, and the long series of "Bravas" for Marianne. And then another warning pain. Her own child would be a girl and she would name it not after anyone in Paul's family or in her own, but after the woman she loved!

Her husband woke up suddenly. "It's all over now," he sighed glancing at the stage with unconcealed relief.

But no, it wasn't all over. It never could be really. Not this feeling she had for the Marianne she had known off the stage or Marianne the gracious star who threw kisses to her lusty cheering audience. Marianne had become a goddess whom the whole world worshipped. Could she still be human as well?

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