-how can we
judge?" she appealed.

He had a pause, his hand on the latch. "Oh, I'll tell you frankly what I
think of him!"

XIX

When he got into the street he looked about him for a cab, but was
obliged to walk some distance before encountering one. In this little
interval he saw no reason to modify the determination he had formed in
descending the steep staircase of the Hotel de la Garonne; indeed the
desire prompting it only quickened his pace. He had an hour to spare and
would also go to see Madame Carre. If Miriam and her companion had
proceeded to the Rue de Constantinople on foot he would probably reach
the house as soon as they. It was all quite logical: he was eager to see
Miriam--that was natural enough; and he had admitted to Mrs. Rooth that
he was keen on the subject of Mrs. Lovick's theatrical brother, in whom
such effective aid might perhaps reside. To catch Miriam really
revealing herself to the old actress after the jump she believed herself
to have taken--since that was her errand--would be a very happy stroke,
the thought of which made her benefactor impatient. He presently found
his cab and, as he bounded in, bade the coachman drive fast. He learned
from Madame Carre's portress that her illustrious _locataire_ was at
home and that a lady and a gentleman had gone up some time before.

In the little antechamber, after his admission, he heard a high voice
come from the salon and, stopping a moment to listen, noted that Miriam
was already launched in a recitation. He was able to make out the
words, all the more that before he could prevent the movement the
maid-servant who had led him in had already opened the door of the
room--one of the leaves of it, there being, as in most French doors, two
of these--before which, within, a heavy curtain was suspended. Miriam
was in the act of rolling out some speech from the English poetic
drama--

"For I am sick and capable of fears,
Oppressed with wrongs and therefore full of fears."

He recognised one of the great tirades of Shakespeare's Constance and
saw she had just begun the magnificent scene at the beginning of the
third act of _King John_, in which the passionate, injured mother and
widow sweeps in wild organ-tones the entire scale of her irony and
wrath. The curtain concealed him and he lurked three minutes after he
had motioned to the _femme de chambre_ to retire on tiptoe. The trio in
the salon, absorbed in the performance, had appa