ek they make a fire down there"--he
pointed to a cellar--"for our clients to boil their vermin. Oh, yes, we
have all the luxuries."

Shelton returned to the kitchen, and directly after took leave of the
little Frenchman, who said, with a kind of moral button-holing, as if
trying to adopt him as a patron:

"Trust me, monsieur; if he comes back--that young man--he shall have your
letter without fail. My name is Carolan Jules Carolan; and I am always
at your service."

CHAPTER IV

THE PLAY

Shelton walked away; he had been indulging in a nightmare. "That old
actor was drunk," thought he, "and no doubt he was an Irishman; still,
there may be truth in what he said. I am a Pharisee, like all the rest
who are n't in the pit. My respectability is only luck. What should I
have become if I'd been born into his kind of life?" and he stared at a
stream of people coming from the Stares, trying to pierce the mask of
their serious, complacent faces. If these ladies and gentlemen were put
into that pit into which he had been looking, would a single one of them
emerge again? But the effort of picturing them there was too much for
him; it was too far--too ridiculously far.

One particular couple, a large; fine man and wife, who, in the midst of
all the dirt and rumbling hurry, the gloomy, ludicrous, and desperately
jovial streets, walked side by side in well-bred silence, had evidently
bought some article which pleased them. There was nothing offensive in
their manner; they seemed quite unconcerned at the passing of the other
people. The man had that fine solidity of shoulder and of waist, the
glossy self-possession that belongs to those with horses, guns, and
dressing-bags. The wife, her chin comfortably settled in her fur, kept
her grey eyes on the ground, and, when she spoke, her even and unruffled
voice reached Shelton's ears above all the whirring of the traffic. It
was leisurely precise, as if it had never hurried, had never been
exhausted, or passionate, or afraid. Their talk, like that of many
dozens of fine couples invading London from their country places, was of
where to dine, what theatre they should go to, whom they had seen, what
they should buy. And Shelton knew that from day's end to end, and even
in their bed, these would be the subjects of their conversation. They
were the best-bred people of the sort he met in country houses and
accepted as of course, with a vague discomfort at the bottom of