nature really entitled him to the epithet and his rewards would
doubtless some day define themselves; but meanwhile other promotions
were in precarious prospect, for the failure of which these would not
even in their abundance, be a compensation. He kept an unembarrassed eye
on Downing Street, and while it may frankly be said for him that he was
neither a pedant nor a prig he remembered that the last impression he
ought to wish to produce there was that of a futile estheticism.

He felt the case sufficiently important, however, when he sat behind
Miriam at the play and looked over her shoulder at the stage; her
observation being so keen and her comments so unexpected in their
vivacity that his curiosity was refreshed and his attention stretched
beyond its wont. If the exhibition before the footlights had now lost
much of its annual brilliancy the fashion in which she followed it was
perhaps exhibition enough. The attendance of the little party was,
moreover, in most cases at the Theatre Francais; and it has been
sufficiently indicated that our friend, though the child of a sceptical
age and the votary of a cynical science, was still candid enough to take
the serious, the religious view of that establishment the view of M.
Sarcey and of the unregenerate provincial mind. "In the trade I follow
we see things too much in the hard light of reason, of calculation," he
once remarked to his young charge; "but it's good for the mind to keep
up a superstition or two; it leaves a margin--like having a second horse
to your brougham for night-work. The arts, the amusements, the esthetic
part of life, are night-work, if I may say so without suggesting that
they're illicit. At any rate you want your second horse--your
superstition that stays at home when the sun's high--to go your rounds
with. The Francais is my second horse."

Miriam's appetite for this interest showed him vividly enough how rarely
in the past it had been within her reach; and she pleased him at first
by liking everything, seeing almost no differences and taking her deep
draught undiluted. She leaned on the edge of the box with bright
voracity; tasting to the core, yet relishing the surface, watching each
movement of each actor, attending to the way each thing was said or done
as if it were the most important thing, and emitting from time to time
applausive or restrictive sounds. It was a charming show of the critical
spirit in ecstasy. Sherringham had his wonder abo