nchman."

"Couldn't he make it out if he weren't?" asked Basil Dashwood.

The old woman shrugged her shoulders. "He wouldn't know."

"That's flattering to me."

"Oh you--don't you pretend to complain," Madame Carre said. "I prefer
_our_ imprecations--those of Camille," she went on. "They have the
beauty _des plus belles choses_."

"I can say them too," Miriam broke in.

"_Insolente_!" smiled Madame Carre. "Camille doesn't squat down on the
floor in the middle of them.

"For grief is proud and makes his owner stoop.
To me and to the state of my great grief
Let kings assemble,"

Miriam quickly declaimed. "Ah if you don't feel the way she makes a
throne of it!"

"It's really tremendously fine, _chere madame_," Sherringham said.
"There's nothing like it."

"_Vous etes insupportables_," the old woman answered. "Stay with us.
I'll teach you Phedre."

"Ah Phaedra, Phaedra!" Basil Dashwood vaguely ejaculated, looking more
gentlemanly than ever.

"You've learned all I've taught you, but where the devil have you
learned what I haven't?" Madame Carre went on.

"I've worked--I have; you'd call it work--all through the bright, late
summer, all through the hot, dull, empty days. I've battered down the
door--I did hear it crash one day. But I'm not so very good yet. I'm
only in the right direction."

"_Malicieuse_!" growled Madame Carre.

"Oh I can beat that," the girl went on.

"Did you wake up one morning and find you had grown a pair of wings?"
Peter asked. "Because that's what the difference amounts to--you really
soar. Moreover, you're an angel," he added, charmed with her
unexpectedness, the good nature of her forbearance to reproach him for
not having written to her. And it seemed to him privately that she _was_
angelic when in answer to this she said ever so blandly:

"You know you read _King John_ with me before you went away. I thought
over immensely what you said. I didn't understand it much at the time--I
was so stupid. But it all came to me later."

"I wish you could see yourself," Peter returned.

"My dear fellow, I do. What sort of a dunce do you take me for? I didn't
miss a vibration of my voice, a fold of my robe."

"Well, I didn't see you troubling about it," Peter handsomely insisted.

"No one ever will. Do you think I'd ever show it?"

"_Ars celare artem_," Basil Dashwood jocosely dropped.

"You must first have the art to hide," said Sherringham, wondering a
little why Mir