"Did you think her performance good?"
Judith sticks a little over her answer, but it comes. "Not perfectly satisfactory—not to me, at least. But everyone else spoke so well of it that I may have been mistaken."
"Yet you would encourage her to make a very hazardous experiment, and to incur the displeasure of her family, on the strength of no more than what you now tell me. Do allow me to say that your friend ought to have more experience...."
"She ought to keep out of the water till she can swim," Judith struck in. "I know the sort of thing. What people always say! But can you wonder that she thinks it hard that she isn't allowed to go in at the shallow end of a swimming-bath; and all because of the merest Mrs. Grundy?"
"Not quite the merest Mrs. Grundy. Moderately mere, suppose we say! The actress who fails is in a sorry plight...."
"She wouldn't fail." Judith interrupted again, a little impatiently. "At least—I mean—she wouldn't fail altogether. But, of course, she would take her chance of that. Why should she not try, if she chooses to run the risk?"
Challis was watching her image in a mirror as she said this, and thought he saw a blush-rose tinge creeping over the cheek. Surely she was taking this friend's case very much to heart. An idea crossed his mind, and he schemed a test of its truth—a question he would ask.
"Is she beautiful? That would help matters."
The eyes in the mirror turned, and Challis had to withdraw his own suddenly. You know how one feels caught, when a reflection in a glass suddenly transfixes one? It is like conviction of treachery—quite unlike the direct transaction analogous to it. But he need not have been so conscious; as he saw, when a furtive glance back showed him that the reflection was not looking at him, but at Miss Arkroyd, at her corner of the sofa.
"Beauty is so much a matter of opinion," said she. "No doubt she herself is convinced her allowance of it is enough for working purposes." She stopped a moment, listening to sounds approaching—the motor-party audible on the stairs. Then, as she began to get up from the sofa, she said quickly, "If you think you can be of any use to her—with introductions and so on—I will tell you who she is. Sometime; not now. There they are!" The interview was at an end, and Challis prepared to merge in a world he was sure would be less interesting. However, he felt some curiosity to hear the tale of the motor disaster.