satisfaction when he caught it was rather that of a person who is
pleased at verifying something he has had the acumen to discover than
any more poignant emotion. He went far oftener to see this than he did
to watch Blanche in her small part as one of the innocuous and well-bred
company performing at the little old Strand Theatre, which was then
still a phalanx of the respectable Swanborough family.

Blanche kept her work as a thing apart from her life--that is to say,
she did not join the rest of the company at supper at the pothouse
opposite, nor acknowledge the attentions of the mashers from the front
row who waited at the shabby little stage door of a night. She was very
charming to the other members of the company, especially the women, and
the fact that she had enemies there was easily explained on the ground
of her aloofness. She told Ishmael very little with all her frankness of
address, but one night as he was seeing her home she asked him to come
and have tea with her next day, which happened to be a Sunday, and
Ishmael accepted eagerly; it was the first time she had actually asked
him to the house.

When he arrived, clasping a bouquet he had bought overnight and nursed
in his bedroom water-jug, he found that she had begged the loan of the
ground-floor sitting-room, which was unlet, from her landlady, and was
awaiting him there, wearing her grey dress and a rose pinned by the
little white muslin collar that spanned the base of her throat. She was
not looking her best, but somehow that made her all the more appealing
to Ishmael; the sudden heat had made dark shadows under her eyes, and
her movements were more languid even than usual.

It was an ugly room, like all its kind; but Blanche had the triumphant
quality of rising superior to her background, which is one of the most