Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 1.djvu/150

142 patronizing.) But he himself, he related, was now constantly employed in the same beneficence, listening, two-thirds of his time, to "intonations" and shrieks. She had doubtless observed it herself, how the great current of the age, the adoration of the mime, was almost too strong for any individual; how it swept one along and hurled one against the rocks. As she made no response to this proposition Gabriel Nash asked her if she had not been struck with the main sign of the time, the preponderance of the mountebank, the glory and renown, the personal favour, that he enjoyed. Hadn't she noticed what an immense part of the public attention he held, in London at least? For in Paris society was not so pervaded with him, and the women of the profession, in particular, were not in every drawing-room.

"I don't know what you mean," Mrs. Dallow said. "I know nothing of any such people."

"Aren't they under your feet wherever you turn—their performances, their portraits, their speeches, their autobiographies, their names, their manners, their ugly mugs, as the people say, and their idiotic pretensions?"

"I dare say it depends on the places one goes to. If they're everywhere"—and Mrs. Dallow paused a moment—"I don't go everywhere."

"I don't go anywhere, but they mount on my back, at home, like the Old Man of the Sea. Just observe a little when you return to London," Nash continued, with friendly instructiveness. Mrs. Dallow got up at this—she didn't like receiving directions; but no other corner of the room appeared to offer her any particular reason for crossing to it: she never