Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 2.djvu/77

Rh it in her face. It only made her appear more intelligent; and yet there had been a time when he had thought her stupid! Intelligent was the whole spirit in which she carried the scene, making him cry to himself from point to point: "How she feels it—how she sees it—how she creates it!"

He looked at moments at Madame Carré and perceived that she had an open book in her lap, apparently a French prose version, brought by her visitors, of the play; but she never either glanced at him or at the volume; she only sat screwing into the girl her hard bright eyes, polished by experience like fine old brasses. The young man uttering the lines of the other speakers was attentive in another degree; he followed Miriam in his own copy of the play, to be sure not to miss the cue; but he was elated and expressive, was evidently even surprised; he coloured and smiled, and when he extended his hand to assist Constance to rise, after Miriam, acting out her text, had seated herself grandly on "the huge, firm earth," he bowed over her as obsequiously as if she had been his veritable sovereign. He was a very good-looking young man, tall, well-proportioned, straight-featured and fair, of whom manifestly the first thing to be said on any occasion was that he looked remarkably like a gentleman. He carried this appearance, which proved inveterate and importunate, to a point that was almost a negation of its spirit; that is it might have been a question whether it could be in good taste to wear any character, even that particular one, so much on one's sleeve. It was literally on his sleeve that this young man partly wore his own; for it resided considerably in his attire and especially in a certain close-fitting dark