ot keep Mr.
Dymes waiting very long, and on her entrance he gazed at her with very
frank admiration. Frank, too, was his greeting--that of a very old and
intimate friend, rather than of a drawing-room acquaintance. He came
straight from England, he said; a spring holiday, warranted by the
success of his song 'Margot', which the tenor, Topham, had sung at St
James's Hall. A few days ago he had happened to see Miss Leach, who
gave him Miss Frothingham's address, and he could not deny himself the
pleasure of calling. Chatting thus, he made himself comfortable in a
chair, and Alma sat over against him. The man was loud, conceited,
vulgar; but, after all, he composed very sweet music, which promised to
take the public ear; and he brought with him a waft from the happiness
of old days; and how could one expect small proprieties of a bohemian,
an artist? Alma began to talk eagerly, joyously.

'And what are you doing, Miss Frothingham?'

'Oh, fiddling a little. But I haven't been very well.'

'I can see that. Yet in another sense you look a better than ever.'

He began to hum an air, glancing round the room.

'You haven't a piano. Just listen to this; how do you think it will
do?' He hummed through a complete melody. 'Came into my head last
night. Wants rather sentimental words--the kind of thing that goes down
with the British public. Rather a good air, don't you think?'

Felix Dymes had two manners of conversation. In a company at all
ceremonious, and when it behoved him to make an impression, he talked
as the artist and the expert in music, with many German phrases, which
he pronounced badly, to fill up the gaps in his knowledge. His familiar
stream of talk was very different: it discarded affectation, and had a
directness, a vigour, which never left one in doubt as to his actual
views of life. How melody of any kind could issue from a nature so
manifestly ignoble might puzzle the idealist. Alma, who had known a
good many musical people, was not troubled by this difficulty; in her
present mood, she submitted to the arrogance of success, and felt a
pleasure, an encouragement, in Dymes's bluff _camaraderie_.

'Let me try to catch it on the violin,' she said when, with nodding
head and waving arm, he had hummed again through his composition.

She succeeded in doing so, and Dymes raised his humming to a
sentimental roar, and was vastly pleased with himself.

'I like to see you in a place like this,' he said. 'Looks more