; yet it may be confided to the reader that
during these supreme scenes Bridget Dormer directed her eyes less to the
inspired actress than to a figure in the stalls who sat with his own
gaze fastened to the stage. It may further be intimated that Peter
Sherringham, though he saw but a fragment of the performance, read
clear, at the last, in the intense light of genius with which this
fragment was charged, that even so after all he had been rewarded for
his formidable journey. The great trouble of his infatuation subsided,
leaving behind it something appreciably deep and pure. This pacification
was far from taking place at once, but it was helped on, unexpectedly to
him--it began to work at least--the very next night he saw the play,
through the whole of which he then sat. He felt somehow recalled to the
real by the very felicity of this experience, the supreme exhibition
itself. He began to come back as from a far-off province of his history
where miserable madness had reigned. He had been baffled, he had got his
answer; it must last him--that was plain. He didn't fully accept it the
first week or the second; but he accepted it sooner than he could have
supposed had he known what it was to be when he paced at night, under
the southern stars, the deck of the ship bearing him to England.

It had been, as we know, Miss Tressilian's view, and even Biddy's, that
evening, that Peter Sherringham would join them as they left the
theatre. This view, however, was not confirmed by the event, for our
troubled gentleman vanished utterly--disappointingly crude behaviour on
the part of a young diplomatist who had distinguished himself--before
any one could put a hand on him. And he failed to make up for his
crudity by coming to see any one the next day, or even the next. Indeed
many days elapsed and very little would have been known about him had it
not been that, in the country, Mrs. Dallow knew. What Mrs. Dallow knew
was eventually known to Biddy Dormer; and in this way it could be
established in his favour that he had remained some extraordinarily
small number of days in London, had almost directly gone over to Paris
to see his old chief. He came back from Paris--Biddy learnt this not
from Julia, but in a much more immediate way: she knew it by his
pressing the little electric button at the door of Florence Tressilian's
flat one day when the good Florence was out and she herself was at home.
He made on this occasion a very long visi