And she escaped to make a rapid change of dress.  For Alma was not like Sibyl Carnaby in perpetual regard for personal finish; she dressed carelessly, save when the occasion demanded pains; she liked the ease of gowns and slippers, of loose hair and free throat; and this taste had grown upon her during the past months.  But she did not keep Mr. Dymes waiting very long, and on her entrance he gazed at her with very frank admiration.  Frank, too, was his greeting —­ that of a very old and intimate friend, rather than of a drawing-room acquaintance.  He came straight from England, he said; a spring holiday, warranted by the success of his song ‘Margot’, which the tenor, Topham, had sung at St James’s Hall.  A few days ago he had happened to see Miss Leach, who gave him Miss Frothingham’s address, and he could not deny himself the pleasure of calling.  Chatting thus, he made himself comfortable in a chair, and Alma sat over against him.  The man was loud, conceited, vulgar; but, after all, he composed very sweet music, which promised to take the public ear; and he brought with him a waft from the happiness of old days; and how could one expect small proprieties of a bohemian, an artist?  Alma began to talk eagerly, joyously.

‘And what are you doing, Miss Frothingham?’

‘Oh, fiddling a little.  But I haven’t been very well.’

‘I can see that.  Yet in another sense you look a better than ever.’

He began to hum an air, glancing round the room.

‘You haven’t a piano.  Just listen to this; how do you think it will do?’ He hummed through a complete melody.  ’Came into my head last night.  Wants rather sentimental words —­ the kind of thing that goes down with the British public.  Rather a good air, don’t you think?’

Felix Dymes had two manners of conversation.  In a company at all ceremonious, and when it behoved him to make an impression, he talked as the artist and the expert in music, with many German phrases, which he pronounced badly, to fill up the gaps in his knowledge.  His familiar stream of talk was very different:  it discarded affectation, and had a directness, a vigour, which never left one in doubt as to his actual views of life.  How melody of any kind could issue from a nature so manifestly ignoble might puzzle the idealist.  Alma, who had known a good many musical people, was not troubled by this difficulty; in her present mood, she submitted to the arrogance of success, and felt a pleasure, an encouragement, in Dymes’s bluff camaraderie.

‘Let me try to catch it on the violin,’ she said when, with nodding head and waving arm, he had hummed again through his composition.

She succeeded in doing so, and Dymes raised his humming to a sentimental roar, and was vastly pleased with himself.

‘I like to see you in a place like this,’ he said.  ’Looks more business-like —­ as if you really meant to do something.  Do you live here alone?’