"Remorse--_remorse_," he repeated, rolling the word under his tongue
with an accent that was a clue to the psychology of the popular
drama; and Granice, perversely, said to himself: "If I could only
have struck that note I should have been running in six theatres at
once."

He saw that from that moment McCarren's professional zeal would be
fanned by emotional curiosity; and he profited by the fact to
propose that they should dine together, and go on afterward to some
music-hall or theatre. It was becoming necessary to Granice to feel
himself an object of pre-occupation, to find himself in another
mind. He took a kind of gray penumbral pleasure in riveting
McCarren's attention on his case; and to feign the grimaces of moral
anguish became a passionately engrossing game. He had not entered a
theatre for months; but he sat out the meaningless performance in
rigid tolerance, sustained by the sense of the reporter's
observation.

Between the acts, McCarren amused him with anecdotes about the
audience: he knew every one by sight, and could lift the curtain
from every physiognomy. Granice listened indulgently. He had lost
all interest in his kind, but he knew that he was himself the real
centre of McCarren's attention, and that every word the latter spoke
had an indirect bearing on his own problem.

"See that fellow over there--the little dried-up man in the third
row, pulling his moustache? _His_ memoirs would be worth publishing,"
McCarren said suddenly in the last _entr'acte_.

Granice, following his glance, recognized the detective from