She pushed the young man roughly away, in a blaze of passion so lurid and terrible that it frightened the two men.
Lord Bellina looked helplessly at Levison for a moment. The elder man rose to the occasion.
"Let's get to business," he said; "something must be done."
The woman nodded eagerly and quickly, and with the same unnatural glitter in her eyes.
"Have you seen any of the papers?" Levison said.
She shook her head.
"Well, Bally and I have been going through them, and, what's more, we have been seeing a whole lot of people, and getting various extra opinions. You know that I can say without boasting in the least that there are very few men in London who know the popular taste as I do. I've made my success by realizing exactly what London will do and think just a day or two before it has made up its own mind. I have never made a mistake. I won't bother you now with an account of how I have arrived at my present conclusion. It is enough to say that I am certain of it, and that it is this:
"There is not the slightest doubt that if this man Joseph continues in his pleasant little games—you see, I speak without heat—theatrical business in London will be ruined for months. There is going to be a great wave of religious enthusiasm all over the place. This man—Joseph he calls himself—is going to lead it. The man is an extraordinary one. He has a personality and a force greater, probably, than any living person in Europe to-day. There is no doubt about it. You, my dear Mimi, will have to forego your nightly triumphs. Public opinion will hound you off the stage and shut up my theatre, or compel me to let it as a mission-hall for ten pounds a night! As for you, Bellina, you will have to retire to your estates in Galway, and superintend the potato crop, and take an intelligent interest in the brood of the Irish national animal—the pig in short, Bally!"
Although he spoke jauntily enough, there was a deep vein of bitterness and sincerity underlying the Jew's words. He watched the faces of his two listeners with a quick and cunning scrutiny.
Mimi Addington spoke.