hat he was on the
point of passing from the chapter of his cleverness to that of his
timidity. It was a false alarm, however, for he only animadverted on the
pleasures of the elegant extract hurled--literally _hurle_ in
general--from the centre of the room at one's defenceless head. He
intimated that in his opinion these pleasures were all for the
performers. The auditors had at any rate given Miss Rooth a charming
afternoon; that of course was what Mrs. Dallow's kind brother had mainly
intended in arranging the little party. (Julia hated to hear him call
her brother "kind": the term seemed offensively patronising.) But he
himself, he related, was now constantly employed in the same
beneficence, listening two-thirds of his time to "intonations" and
shrieks. She had doubtless observed it herself, how the great current of
the age, the adoration of the mime, was almost too strong for any
individual; how it swept one along and dashed one against the rocks. As
she made no response to this proposition Gabriel Nash asked her if she
hadn't been struck with the main sign of the time, the preponderance of
the mountebank, the glory and renown, the personal favour, he enjoyed.
Hadn't she noticed what an immense part of the public attention he held
in London at least? For in Paris society was not so pervaded with him,
and the women of the profession, in particular, were not in every
drawing-room.

"I don't know what you mean," Mrs. Dallow said. "I know nothing of any
such people."

"Aren't they under your feet wherever you turn--their performances,
their portraits, their speeches, their autobiographies, their names,
their manners, their ugly mugs, as the people say, and their idiotic
pretensions?"

"I daresay it depends on the places one goes to. If they're
everywhere"--and she paused a moment--"I don't go everywhere."

"I don't go anywhere, but they mount on my back at home like the Old Man
of the Sea. Just observe a little when you return to London," Mr. Nash
went on with friendly instructiveness. Julia got up at this--she didn't
like receiving directions; but no other corner of the room appeared to
offer her any particular reason for crossing to it: she never did such a
thing without a great inducement. So she remained standing there as if
she were quitting the place in a moment, which indeed she now
determined to do; and her interlocutor, rising also, lingered beside
her unencouraged but unperturbed. He proceeded to remark