e went
on: "They're persons theatrical. The younger one's trying to go upon the
stage."

"And are you assisting her?" Biddy inquired, pleased she had guessed so
nearly right.

"Not in the least--I'm rather choking her off. I consider it the lowest
of the arts."

"Lower than politics?" asked Peter Sherringham, who was listening to
this.

"Dear no, I won't say that. I think the Theatre Francais a greater
institution than the House of Commons."

"I agree with you there!" laughed Sherringham; "all the more that I
don't consider the dramatic art a low one. It seems to me on the
contrary to include all the others."

"Yes--that's a view. I think it's the view of my friends."

"Of your friends?"

"Two ladies--old acquaintances--whom I met in Paris a week ago and whom
I've just been spending an hour with in this place."

"You should have seen them; they struck me very much," Biddy said to her
cousin.

"I should like to see them if they really have anything to say to the
theatre."

"It can easily be managed. Do you believe in the theatre?" asked Gabriel
Nash.

"Passionately," Sherringham confessed. "Don't you?"

Before Nash had had time to answer Biddy had interposed with a sigh.
"How I wish I could go--but in Paris I can't!"

"I'll take you, Biddy--I vow I'll take you."

"But the plays, Peter," the girl objected. "Mamma says they're worse
than the pictures."

"Oh, we'll arrange that: they shall do one at the Francais on purpose
for a delightful little yearning English girl."

"Can you make them?"

"I can make them do anything I choose."

"Ah then it's the theatre that believes in _you_," said Mr. Nash.

"It would be ungrateful if it didn't after all I've done for it!"
Sherringham gaily opined.

Lady Agnes had withdrawn herself from between him and her other guest
and, to signify that she at least had finished eating, had gone to sit
by her son, whom she held, with some importunity, in conversation. But
hearing the theatre talked of she threw across an impersonal challenge
to the paradoxical young man. "Pray should you think it better for a
gentleman to be an actor?"

"Better than being a politician? Ah, comedian for comedian, isn't the
actor more honest?"

Lady Agnes turned to her son and brought forth with spirit: "Think of
your great father, Nicholas!"

"He was an honest man," said Nicholas. "That's perhaps why he couldn't
stand it."

Peter Sherringham judged the colloquy to have taken an u