When she came in the next evening he was in the hall. He came forward with his bearded courteous emphatically sweeping foreign bow; a foreign professor bowing to an audience he was about to address. Bitte verzeihen Sie, he began, his rich low tones a little breathless; the gong blared forth just behind him; he stood rooted, holding her with respectful melancholy gaze as his lips went on forming their German sentences. The clangour died down; people were coming downstairs drawing Miriam’s gaze as he moved from their pathway into the dining-room, still facing her with the end of his little speech lingering nervously on his features. He was in his frock-coat and shone richly black and white under the direct lamplight; he was even more handsome than she had thought, solidly beautiful, glowing in shapely movement as he stood still and gestureless before her, set off by the shapelessly moving, dinner drawn forms passing into the dining-room. She smiled in response to whatever he may have said and wondered, having apologised for yesterday, in what way he would announce to her the outside engagement for this evening for which he was so shiningly prepared. “Zo,” he said gravely, “if you are now free, I will almost immediately come up; we shall not wait till eight o’clock.” Miriam bowed in response to the sweeping obeisance with which he turned into the dining-room, and ran upstairs. He came up before the end of the first course, before she had had time to test in the large overmantel the shape of her hair that had seemed in the little mirror upstairs, accidentally good, quite like the hair of someone who mysteriously knew how to get good effects. “I have been sleeping,” he said in wide cheerful tones as he crossed the room, “all day until now. I am a little stupid; but I have very many things to say you. First I must say you,” he said more gravely and stood arrested with his coat tails in his hands, in front of the chair opposite to hers at a little table, “that your Emerson is _most_-wonderful.”