r on some late
visit that the young actor had finally moved his lodgings into the
quarter, making himself a near neighbour for all sorts of convenience.
"Hang his convenience!" Peter thought, perceiving that Mrs. Lovick's
"Arty" was now altogether one of the family. Oh the family!--it was a
queer one to be connected with: that consciousness was acute in
Sherringham's breast to-day as he entered Mrs. Rooth's little circle.
The place was filled with cigarette-smoke and there was a messy
coffee-service on the piano, whose keys Basil Dashwood lightly touched
for his own diversion. Nash, addressing the room of course, was at one
end of a little sofa with his nose in the air, and Nick Dormer was at
the other end, seated much at his ease and with a certain privileged
appearance of having been there often before, though Sherringham knew he
had not. He looked uncritical and very young, as rosy as a school-boy on
a half-holiday. It was past five o'clock in the day, but Mrs. Rooth was
not dressed; there was, however, no want of finish in her elegant
attitude--the same relaxed grandeur (she seemed to let you understand)
for which she used to be distinguished at Castle Nugent when the house
was full. She toyed incongruously, in her unbuttoned wrapper, with a
large tinsel fan which resembled a theatrical property.

It was one of the discomforts of Peter's position that many of those
minor matters which are superficially at least most characteristic of
the histrionic life had power to displease him, so that he was obliged
constantly to overlook and condone and pretend. He disliked besmoked
drawing-rooms and irregular meals and untidy arrangements; he could
suffer from the vulgarity of Mrs. Rooth's apartments, the importunate
photographs which gave on his nerves, the barbarous absence of signs of
an orderly domestic life, the odd volumes from the circulating library
(you could see what they were--the very covers told you--at a glance)
tumbled about under smeary cups and glasses. He hadn't waited till now
to feel it "rum" that fate should have let him in for such contacts;
but as he stood before his hostess and her companions he wondered
perhaps more than ever why he should. Her companions somehow, who were
not responsible, didn't keep down his wonder; which was particularly
odd, since they were not superficially in the least of Bohemian type.
Almost the first thing that struck him, as happened, in coming into the
room, was the fresh fa