iam broke into "The Lotus-Eaters,"
from which she passed directly, almost breathlessly, to "Edward Gray."
Sherringham had by this time heard her make four different attempts, and
the only generalisation very present to him was that she uttered these
dissimilar compositions in exactly the same tone--a solemn, droning,
dragging measure suggestive of an exhortation from the pulpit and
adopted evidently with the "affecting" intention and from a crude idea
of "style." It was all funereal, yet was artlessly rough. Sherringham
thought her English performance less futile than her French, but he
could see that Madame Carre listened to it even with less pleasure. In
the way the girl wailed forth some of her Tennysonian lines he detected
a faint gleam as of something pearly in deep water. But the further she
went the more violently she acted on the nerves of Mr. Gabriel Nash:
that also he could discover from the way this gentleman ended by
slipping discreetly to the window and leaning there with his head out
and his back to the exhibition. He had the art of mute expression; his
attitude said as clearly as possible: "No, no, you can't call me either
ill-mannered or ill-natured. I'm the showman of the occasion, moreover,
and I avert myself, leaving you to judge. If there's a thing in life I
hate it's this idiotic new fashion of the drawing-room recitation and of
the insufferable creatures who practise it, who prevent conversation,
and whom, as they're beneath it, you can't punish by criticism.
Therefore what I'm doing's only too magnanimous--bringing these
benighted women here, paying with my person, stifling my just
repugnance."

While Sherringham judged privately that the manner in which Miss Rooth
had acquitted herself offered no element of interest, he yet remained
aware that something surmounted and survived her failure, something that
would perhaps be worth his curiosity. It was the element of outline and
attitude, the way she stood, the way she turned her eyes, her head, and
moved her limbs. These things held the attention; they had a natural
authority and, in spite of their suggesting too much the school-girl in
the _tableau-vivant_, a "plastic" grandeur. Her face, moreover, grew as
he watched it; something delicate dawned in it, a dim promise of variety
and a touching plea for patience, as if it were conscious of being able
to show in time more shades than the simple and striking gloom which had
as yet mainly graced it. The