Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 3.djvu/159

Rh her, but as his companion evidently meant not to move he felt a delicacy in regard to being more forward. During their brief dinner together (they made a rigid point of not being late), Peter had been silent and irremediably serious, but also, his kinsman judged, full of the wish to make it plain that he was calm. In his seat he was calmer than ever; had an air even of trying to suggest to Nick that his attendance, preoccupied as he was with deeper solemnities, was slightly mechanical, the result of a conception of duty, a habit of courtesy. When during a scene in the second act—a scene from which Miriam was absent—Nick observed to him that from his inexpressiveness one might gather he was not pleased, he replied after a moment: "I've been looking for her mistakes." And when Nick rejoined to this that he certainly wouldn't find them he said again, in an odd tone: "No, I sha'n't find them—I sh'a'nt find them." It might have seemed that since the girl's performance was a dazzling success he regarded his evening as rather a failure.

After the third act Nick said candidly: "My dear fellow, how can you sit here? Aren't you going to speak to her?"

To which Peter replied inscrutably: "Lord, no, never again; I bade her good-bye yesterday. She knows what I think of her form. It's very good, but she carries it a little too far. Besides, she didn't want me to come, and it's therefore more discreet to keep away from her."

"Surely it isn't an hour for discretion!" cried Nick. "Excuse me, at any rate, for five minutes."

He went behind and reappeared only as the curtain was rising on the fourth act; and in the interval between the