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Both his listeners felt a half-guilty relief, and that night when alone in his room Ishmael, aided by that glimpse of the exterior of her surroundings and by Carminow's words, was assailed again by the thought of her, but not as keenly as before. Shocked senses had been responsible for that first keenness, and imagination, however aided, could not sting to the same depth.
She's got a disease you wouldn't know it if I were to tell you its name that is one of the most obscure known to science, if you can call a thing known when no cure can be discovered to it. Yes, she's hopelessly paralysed, is poor Hilaria." A certain impersonal note as he spoke of the illness had crept through all the genuine feeling in Carminow's voice.
Both Ishmael and Killigrew were wondering if they ought to go and see her or not, both fighting a repulsion of which Killigrew's was more purely æsthetic and Ishmael's rather a passionate wish to keep thought of such a thing away from life.... They had come to the parting of their way from Carminow's, and all three were standing at the street corner under a flickering gas lamp.
It was not that he was excited so much as that a deep content filled him; life seemed full of promise and even more worth living than he had thought it. The distrust which that news of Carminow's had engendered drifted to the back of his brain; he wandered through the streets, picturing the days to come at Cloom.
Higher still bare boards advertised the fact that only "bed-sitters" or even plain bedrooms were to be found. Carminow's rooms ran the depth of the house, the front one, his sitting-room, being separated from the bedroom by folding doors of the same bright yellow as the doors in the hall.
Carminow's rooms were on the second floor; after the first landing had been passed the stairs suddenly altered in character, and from being carpeted and fairly wide took onto themselves linoleum and a steep straightness that said plainly: "Up to here two guineas a week; above here only thirty shillings, with half-a-crown for extras."
Killigrew laughingly informed Carminow that Ishmael had never met an actress in his life, and in reply to Carminow's half-mocking commiseration, Ishmael answered gaily that he had never even been to the theatre, except to a penny gaff that once visited Penzance. It was indeed with a secret tingling that he now found himself seated in a box.