"We shall see him as we go out," Biddy returned: "he must lose no more
time."

Nick looked at him with a glass, then exclaiming: "Well, I'm glad he has
pulled himself together!"

"Why what's the matter with him--if he wasn't disappointed of his seat?"
Miss Tressilian demanded.

"The matter with him is that a couple of hours ago he had a great
shock."

"A great shock?"

"I may as well mention it at last," Nick went on. "I had to say
something to him in the lobby there when we met--something I was pretty
sure he couldn't like. I let him have it full in the face--it seemed to
me better and wiser. I let him know that Juliet's married."

"Didn't he know it?" asked Biddy, who, with her face raised, had
listened in deep stillness to every word that fell from her brother.

"How should he have known it? It has only just taken place, and they've
been so clever, for reasons of their own--those people move among a lot
of considerations that are absolutely foreign to us--about keeping it
out of the papers. They put in a lot of lies and they leave out the real
things."

"You don't mean to say Mr. Sherringham wanted to _marry_ her!" Miss
Tressilian gasped.

"Don't ask me what he wanted--I daresay we shall never know. One thing's
very certain--that he didn't like my news, dear old Peter, and that I
shan't soon forget the look in his face as he turned away from me and
slipped out into the street. He was too much upset--he couldn't trust
himself to come back; he had to walk about--he tried to walk it off."

"Let us hope, then, he _has_ walked it off!"

"Ah poor fellow--he couldn't hold out to the end; he has had to come
back and look at her once more. He knows she'll be sublime in these last
scenes."

"Is he so much in love with her as that? What difference does it make
for an actress if she _is_ mar--?" But in this rash inquiry Miss
Tressilian suddenly checked herself.

"We shall probably never know how much he has been in love with her, nor
what difference it makes. We shall never know exactly what he came back
for, nor why he couldn't stand it out there any longer without relief,
nor why he scrambled down here all but straight from the station, nor
why after all, for the last two hours, he has been roaming the streets.
And it doesn't matter, for it's none of our business. But I'm sorry for
him--she is going to be sublime," Nick added. The curtain was rising on
the tragic climax of the play.

Miriam Rooth was sublime