Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 1.djvu/131

Rh he could see that Madame Carré listened to it with even less pleasure. In the way the girl wailed forth some of her Tennysonian lines he detected a possibility of a thrill. But the further she went, the more violently she acted on the nerves of Mr. Gabriel Nash: that also he could discover, from the way this gentleman ended by slipping discreetly to the window and leaning there, with his head out and his back to the exhibition. He had the art of mute expression; his attitude said, as clearly as possible: "No, no, you can't call me either ill-mannered or ill-natured. I'm the showman of the occasion, moreover, and I avert myself, leaving you to judge. If there's a thing in life I hate, it's this idiotic new fashion of the drawing-room recitation, and the insufferable creatures who practise it, who prevent conversation and whom, as they are beneath it, you can't punish by criticism. Therefore what I am is only too magnanimous—bringing these benighted women here, paying with my person, stifling my just repugnance."

At the same time that Sherringham pronounced privately that the manner in which Miss Rooth had acquitted herself offered no element of interest, he remained conscious that something surmounted and survived her failure, something that would perhaps be worth taking hold of. It was the element of outline and attitude, the way she stood, the way she turned her eyes, her head, and moved her limbs. These things held the attention; they had a natural felicity and, in spite of their suggesting too much the school-girl in the tableau-vivant, a sort of grandeur. Her face, moreover, grew as he watched it; something delicate dawned in it, a dim promise of