f the
serious drama, would be a new and vivifying force. The world was just
then so bright to him that even Basil Dashwood struck him at first as a
conceivable agent of his dream.

It must be added that before Miriam arrived the breeze that filled
Sherringham's sail began to sink a little. He passed out of the
eminently "let" drawing-room, where twenty large photographs of the
young actress bloomed in the desert; he went into the garden by a glass
door that stood open, and found Mr. Dashwood lolling on a bench and
smoking cigarettes. This young man's conversation was a different
music--it took him down, as he felt; showed him, very sensibly and
intelligibly, it must be confessed, the actual theatre, the one they
were all concerned with, the one they would have to make the miserable
best of. It was fortunate that he kept his intoxication mainly to
himself: the Englishman's habit of not being effusive still prevailed
with him after his years of exposure to the foreign infection. Nothing
could have been less exclamatory than the meeting of the two men, with
its question or two, its remark or two, about the new visitor's arrival
in London; its off-hand "I noticed you last night, I was glad you turned
up at last" on one side and its attenuated "Oh yes, it was the first
time; I was very much interested" on the other. Basil Dashwood played a
part in Yolande and Peter had not failed to take with some comfort the
measure of his aptitude. He judged it to be of the small order, as
indeed the part, which was neither that of the virtuous nor that of the
villainous hero, restricted him to two or three inconspicuous effects
and three or four changes of dress. He represented an ardent but
respectful young lover whom the distracted heroine found time to pity a
little and even to rail at; but it was impressed upon his critic that he
scarcely represented young love. He looked very well, but Peter had
heard him already in a hundred contemporary pieces; he never got out of
rehearsal. He uttered sentiments and breathed vows with a nice voice,
with a shy, boyish tremor, but as if he were afraid of being chaffed for
it afterwards; giving the spectator in the stalls the sense of holding
the prompt-book and listening to a recitation. He made one think of
country-houses and lawn-tennis and private theatricals; than which there
couldn't be, to Peter's mind, a range of association more disconnected
from the actor's art.

Dashwood knew all about t