s if the appeal failed to reach Julia's intelligence, as he
judged, seeing presently how deeply she was agitated. Nothing mattered
in face of the sense of danger taking possession of him after she had
been in the room a few moments. He wanted to say, "What's the
difficulty? Has anything happened?" but he felt how little she would
like him to utter words so intimate in presence of the person she had
been rudely startled to find between them. He pronounced Miriam's name
to her and her own to Miriam, but Julia's recognition of the ceremony
was so slight as to be scarcely perceptible. Miriam had the air of
waiting for something more before she herself made a sign; and as
nothing more came she continued to say nothing and not to budge. Nick
added a remark to the effect that Julia would remember to have had the
pleasure of meeting her the year before--in Paris, that day at old
Peter's; to which Mrs. Dallow made answer, "Ah yes," without any
qualification, while she looked down at some rather rusty studies on
panels ranged along the floor and resting against the base of the wall.
Her discomposure was a clear pain to herself; she had had a shock of
extreme violence, and Nick saw that as Miriam showed no symptom of
offering to give up her sitting her stay would be of the briefest. He
wished that young woman would do something--say she would go, get up,
move about; as it was she had the appearance of watching from her point
of vantage the other's upset. He made a series of inquiries about
Julia's doings in the country, to two or three of which she gave answers
monosyllabic and scarcely comprehensible, only turning her eyes round
and round the room as in search of something she couldn't find--of an
escape, of something that was not Miriam. At last she said--it was at
the end of a very few minutes:

"I didn't come to stay--when you're so busy. I only looked in to see if
you were here. Good-bye."

"It's charming of you to have come. I'm so glad you've seen for yourself
how well I'm occupied," Nick replied, not unconscious of how red he was.
This made Mrs. Dallow look at him while Miriam considered them both.
Julia's eyes had a strange light he had never seen before--a flash of
fear by which he was himself frightened. "Of course I'll see you later,"
he added in awkward, in really misplaced gaiety while she reached the
door, which she opened herself, getting out with no further attention to
Miriam. "I wrote to you this morning--you'v