as a part of the impression
that she was now only showing to the full, for this time she had verse
to deal with and she made it unexpectedly exquisite. She was beauty,
melody, truth; she was passion and persuasion and tenderness. She caught
up the obstreperous play in soothing, entwining arms and, seeming to
tread the air in the flutter of her robe, carried it into the high
places of poetry, of art, of style. And she had such tones of nature,
such concealments of art, such effusions of life, that the whole scene
glowed with the colour she communicated, and the house, pervaded with
rosy fire, glowed back at the scene. Nick looked round in the intervals;
he felt excited and flushed--the night had turned to a feast of
fraternity and he expected to see people embrace each other. The crowd,
the agitation, the triumph, the surprise, the signals and rumours, the
heated air, his associates, near him, pointing out other figures who
presumably were celebrated but whom he had never heard of, all amused
him and banished every impulse to question or to compare. Miriam was as
happy as some right sensation--she would have fed the memory with deep
draughts.

One of the things that amused him or at least helped to fill his
attention was Peter's attitude, which apparently didn't exclude
criticism--rather indeed mainly implied it. This admirer never took his
eyes off the actress, but he made no remark about her and never stirred
out of his chair. Nick had had from the first a plan of going round to
speak to her, but as his companion evidently meant not to move he
scrupled at being more forward. During their brief dinner together--they
were determined not to be late--Peter had been silent, quite recklessly
grave, but also, his kinsman judged, full of the wish to make it clear
he was calm. In his seat he was calmer than ever and had an air even of
trying to suggest that his attendance, preoccupied as he was with deeper
solemnities, was more or less mechanical, the result of a conception of
duty, a habit of courtesy. When during a scene in the second act--a
scene from which Miriam was absent--Nick observed to him that one might
judge from his reserve that he wasn't pleased he replied after a moment:
"I've been looking for her mistakes." And when Nick made answer to this
that he certainly wouldn't find them he said again in an odd tone: "No,
I shan't find them--I shan't find them." It might have seemed that since
the girl's performance was a