e that Nick Dormer, as he
glanced at them, felt a quickened curiosity to look at the woman who
reconciled being alive to-day with having been alive so long ago. Peter
Sherringham already knew how she managed this miracle, but every visit
he paid her added to his amused, charmed sense that it _was_ a miracle
and that his extraordinary old friend had seen things he should never,
never see. Those were just the things he wanted to see most, and her
duration, her survival, cheated him agreeably and helped him a little to
guess them. His appreciation of the actor's art was so systematic that
it had an antiquarian side, and at the risk of representing him as
attached to an absurd futility it must be said that he had as yet hardly
known a keener regret for anything than for the loss of that antecedent
world, and in particular for his having belatedly missed the great
_comedienne_, the light of the French stage in the early years of the
century, of whose example and instruction Madame Carre had had the
inestimable benefit. She had often described to him her rare
predecessor, straight from whose hands she had received her most
celebrated parts and of whom her own manner was often a religious
imitation; but her descriptions troubled him more than they consoled,
only confirming his theory, to which so much of his observation had
already ministered, that the actor's art in general was going down and
down, descending a slope with abysses of vulgarity at its foot, after
having reached its perfection, more than fifty years ago, in the talent
of the lady in question. He would have liked to dwell for an hour
beneath the meridian.

Gabriel Nash introduced the new-comers to his companions; but the
younger of the two ladies gave no sign of lending herself to this
transaction. The girl was very white; she huddled there, silent and
rigid, frightened to death, staring, expressionless. If Bridget Dormer
had seen her at this moment she might have felt avenged for the
discomfiture of her own spirit suffered at the Salon, the day before,
under the challenging eyes of Maud Vavasour. It was plain at the present
hour that Miss Vavasour would have run away had she not regarded the
persons present as so many guards and keepers. Her appearance made Nick
feel as if the little temple of art in which they were collected had
been the waiting-room of a dentist. Sherringham had seen a great many
nervous girls tremble before the same ordeal, and he liked to be