Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 1.djvu/30

22 accident of their resting at this moment, for a little while—it struck Biddy as very long—on her own. Both of these ladies were clad in light, thin, scanty gowns, giving an impression of flowered figures and odd transparencies, and in low shoes, which showed a great deal of stocking and were ornamented with large rosettes. Biddy's slightly agitated perception travelled directly to their shoes: they suggested to her vaguely that the wearers were dancers—connected possibly with the old-fashioned exhibition of the shawl-dance. By the time she had taken in so much as this the mellifluous young man had perceived and addressed himself to her brother. He came forward with an extended hand. Nick greeted him and said it was a happy chance—he was uncommonly glad to see him.

"I never come across you—I don't know why," Nick remarked, while the two, smiling, looked each other up and down, like men reunited after a long interval.

"Oh, it seems to me there's reason enough: our paths in life are so different." Nick's friend had a great deal of manner, as was evinced by his fashion of saluting her without knowing her.

"Different, yes, but not so different as that. Don't we both live in London, after all, and in the nineteenth century?"

"Ah, my dear Dormer, excuse me: I don't live in the nineteenth century. Jamais de la vie!"

"Nor in London either?"

"Yes—when I'm not in Samarcand! But surely we've diverged since the old days. I adore what you burn; you burn what I adore." While the stranger spoke he looked cheerfully, hospitably, at Biddy; not because it was she, she