smoked cigarettes in the
garden and Miriam gave striking illustrations of the parts she was
studying. Peter was in the state of a man whose toothache has suddenly
stopped--he was exhilarated by the cessation of pain. The pain had been
the effort to remain in Paris after the creature in the world in whom he
was most interested had gone to London, and the balm of seeing her now
was the measure of the previous soreness.

Gabriel Nash had, as usual, plenty to say, and he talked of Nick's
picture so long that Peter wondered if he did it on purpose to vex him.
They went in and out of the house; they made excursions to see what form
the vague meal was taking; and Sherringham got half an hour alone, or
virtually alone, with the mistress of his unsanctioned passion--drawing
her publicly away from the others and making her sit with him in the
most sequestered part of the little gravelled grounds. There was summer
enough for the trees to shut out the adjacent villas, and Basil Dashwood
and Gabriel Nash lounged together at a convenient distance while Nick's
whimsical friend dropped polished pebbles, sometimes audibly splashing,
into the deep well of the histrionic simplicity. Miriam confessed that
like all comedians they ate at queer hours; she sent Dashwood in for
biscuits and sherry--she proposed sending him round to the grocer's in
the Circus Road for superior wine. Peter judged him the factotum of the
little household: he knew where the biscuits were kept and the state of
the grocer's account. When he himself congratulated her on having so
useful an inmate she said genially, but as if the words disposed of him,
"Oh he's awfully handy." To this she added, "You're not, you know";
resting the kindest, most pitying eyes on him. The sensation they gave
him was as sweet as if she had stroked his cheek, and her manner was
responsive even to tenderness. She called him "Dear master" again and
again, and still often "_Cher maitre_," and appeared to express
gratitude and reverence by every intonation.

"You're doing the humble dependent now," he said: "you do it
beautifully, as you do everything." She replied that she didn't make it
humble enough--she couldn't; she was too proud, too insolent in her
triumph. She liked that, the triumph, too much, and she didn't mind
telling him she was perfectly happy. Of course as yet the triumph was
very limited; but success was success, whatever its quantity; the dish
was a small one but had the righ