VII

came swiftly by, bareheaded, in reform dresses, talking eagerly in high-pitched out-turned cultured voices, their uncommunicating selves watchfully entrenched behind the polite Norman idiom. She carried on their manner of speech at lightning speed in her mind, watching its effect upon everything it handled, of damming up, shaping, excluding all but ready-made thought and opinion. Just ahead was an arched doorway and a young man with a sheaf of pamphlets standing within it. “It may,” she announced in character to an imaginary companion, “prove necessary to have some sort of conversational interchange with this individual.” Certainly it left one better prepared for the interview than saying Good Lord shall we have to say something to this creature? She got safely through the doorway, exchanging a slight bow with the young man as he provided her with a syllabus, and entered a large lofty quietly-lit room, where a considerable audience sat facing a raised platform more brightly illuminated, and from which they were confronted by a row of seated forms. She went down the central gangway, bold in her desire for a perfect hearing and slipped into a seat in the second row of chairs. The chairman was taking his place and in the dying down of conversation she heard a quiet flurry of draperies approaching with delicate apologetic rhythm up the gangway. It was the tall young woman. She passed, a veiled figure with bent head and floating scarf, along the little passage between the front row of the audience and the fern-edged platform, upon which she presently emerged, taking her place next to a lady who now rose and came forward, tall and black robed, and whose face, sharply pointing beneath the shadow of a plumy hat, had the expression of an eagle searching the distance with calm piercing eyes. In rousing ringing grievous tones she begged to be allowed to precede the chairman with an important announcement. Miriam inwardly groaned as the voice chid tragically on, demanding a realisation on the part of all, of the meaning for London of the promised arrival in its midst of a world-famed authority in Greek letters. She felt the audience behind her quelled into absolute stillness, and took angry refuge in the cover of her