“I am such a creature of nerves,” she said, raising a superb neck and extending a goddess-like arm, “that I am always perfectly exhausted after the performance.  I fly, as you see, to my first love—­poetry—­as soon as Rosina has changed my dress.  It is not generally known—­but I don’t mind telling you—­that I often nerve myself for the effort of acting by reading some well-remembered passage from my favorite poets, as I stand by the wings.  I quaff, as one might say, a single draught of the Pierian spring before I go on.”

The exact relations between the humorous “walk round,” in which Miss Montgomery usually made her first entrance, and the volume of Byron she held in her hand, did not trouble Mr. Brimmer so much as the beautiful arm with which she emphasized it.  Neither did it strike him that the distinguishing indications of a poetic exaltation were at all unlike the effects of a grosser stimulant known as “Champagne cocktail” on the less sensitive organization of her colleagues.  Touched by her melancholy but fascinating smile, he said gallantly that he had observed no sign of exhaustion, or want of power in her performance that evening.

“Then you were there!” she said, fixing her eyes upon him with an expression of mournful gratitude.  “You actually left your business and the calls of public duty to see the poor mountebank perform her nightly task.”

“I was there with a friend of yours,” answered Brimmer soberly, “who actually asked me to the supper to which Mr. Keene had already invited me, and which you had been kind enough to suggest to me a week ago.”

“True, I had forgotten,” said Miss Montgomery, with a large goddess-like indifference that was more effective with the man before her than the most elaborate explanation.  “You don’t mind them—­do you?—­for we are all friends together.  My position, you know,” she added sadly, “prevents my always following my own inclinations or preferences.  Poor Markham, I fear the world does not do justice to his gentle, impressible nature.  I sympathize with him deeply; we have both had our afflictions, we have both—­lost.  Good heavens!” she exclaimed, with a sudden exaggerated start of horror, “what have I done?  Forgive my want of tact, dear friend; I had forgotten, wretched being that I am, that you, too”—­

She caught his hand in both hers, and bowed her head over it as if unable to finish her sentence.

Brimmer, who had been utterly mystified and amazed at this picture of Markham’s disconsolate attitude to the world, and particularly to the woman before him, was completely finished by this later tribute to his own affliction.  His usually composed features, however, easily took upon themselves a graver cast as he kept, and pressed, the warm hands in his own.

“Fool that I was,” continued Miss Montgomery; “in thinking of poor Markham’s childlike, open grief, I forgot the deeper sorrow that the more manly heart experiences under an exterior that seems cold and impassible.  Yes,” she said, raising her languid eyes to Brimmer, “I ought to have felt the throb of that volcano under its mask of snow.  You have taught me a lesson.”