Keeling had intended to pass an hour among his books to wash off the scum, so to speak, of this atrocious conversation, but when he got to his library, and had taken down his new edition of Omar Khayyam, which Charles Propert had induced him to buy, he found it could give him very little emotion. He was aware of the exquisite type, of the strange sensuous wood-cuts that somehow{289} affected him like a subtle odour, of the beautiful binding, and not least of the text itself, but all these perfections were no more than presented to him; they did not penetrate. He could not rid himself of the scum; the odiousness of his wife¡¯s approbation would not be washed off. And what made it cling was the fact that she had divined him correctly, had rejoiced at his ¡®serving the Club out.¡¯ It was just that which Norah deprecated, and he felt that Lord Inverbroom¡¯s complete silence on the point, his forbearance to hint ever so faintly that perhaps Keeling would reconsider his action, expressed disapprobation as eloquently as Norah¡¯s phrase, which he had finished for her, had done. It was a caddish act, that was what they both thought about it, and Alice, when she had finished her nonsense about Mr Silverdale¡¯s rubber of bridge, had a similar protest in her mind. He did not rate poor Alice¡¯s mind at any high figure; it was but the fact that she was allied to the other two, and opposed to her mother, that added a little weight to her opinion.
¡®I am sorry that I asked you for her address,¡¯ he said; ¡®I will be going home, and you must get back to your packing. Good-night, Propert.¡¯¡®Kindly give me her address then,¡¯ he said. ¡®She wanted me to write her a testimonial, which I am happy to do. She was a very efficient secretary; I have nothing but praise for her. I will send it her to-morrow.¡¯
TWO:A note of distress hung on my hearer's stifled voice; her head went lower and she laid her fingers pensively to her lips. "It would be like him," I heard her murmur, and when I asked if she meant Jewett she shook her head.
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¡®I think you are rather brutal,¡¯ she said. ¡®You don¡¯t help me out at all.¡¯¡®It is good-bye¡¯ she said, and quite simply like a child she raised her face to his."The house had a floor and galleries like one of our theatres, but there were only two galleries, and one of them was on a level with the parquet. The parquet, or floor, was divided into boxes, and they were literally boxes, and no mistake. They were square, and the partitions between them were little more than a foot high, with a flat board on the top for a rail. This was about five inches wide, and I soon saw what it was used for, as the people walked on it in going to and from their boxes. The boxes had no chairs in them, but they were carpeted with clean matting; and anybody could get cushions from the ushers by asking for them. Each box was intended to hold four persons; but it required that the four should not be very large, and that each should stick to his own corner. One box in front of us had six women in it, and there were two or three boxes crowded with children. They had tea and sweetmeats in many of[Pg 233] the boxes, and I noticed that men and boys were going around selling these things. I asked if we had come to the right place, as it occurred to me that it was only at the Bowery and that kind of theatre in New York that they sold peanuts and such things; but the Doctor said it was all right, and they did this in all the best theatres in Japan.SQUEEZING THE FINGERS. SQUEEZING THE FINGERS.All that warm afternoon we paid the tiresome penalty of having pushed our animals too smartly at the outset. We grew sedate; sedate were the brows of the few strangers we met. We talked in pairs. When I spoke with Miss Harper the four listened. She asked about the evils of camp life; for she was one of that fine sort to whom righteousness seems every man's and woman's daily business, one of the most practical items in the world's affairs. And I said camp life was fearfully corrupting; that the merest boys cursed and swore and stole, or else were scorned as weaklings. Then I grew meekly silent and we talked in pairs again, and because I yearned to talk most with Camille I talked most with Estelle. Three times when I turned abruptly from her to Camille and called, "Hark!" the fagged-out horses halted, and as we struck our listening pose the bugle's faint sigh ever farther in our rear was but feebly proportioned to the amount of our gazing into each other's eyes.He bowed his head with a marvellous proud meekness, and left her.
