IX.
"I don't know—I haven't the least idea—I don't care—don't ask me," he broke out immediately, in answer to some question that she put to him, with little delay, about his sense of the way she had done certain things at the theatre. Had she not frankly better give up that way and return to their first idea, the one they had talked over so much? Sherringham declared that it was no idea of his; that at any rate he should never have another as long as he lived; and that, so help him heaven, they had talked such things over more than enough.
"You're tired of me—yes, already," said Miriam, sadly and kindly. They were alone, her mother had not peeped out, and she had prepared herself to return to the theatre. "However, it doesn't matter, and of course your head is full of other things. You must think me ravenously selfish—perpetually chattering about my little shop. What will you have, when one's a shop-girl? You used to like it, but then you weren't a minister."
"What do you know about my being a minister?" Sherringham asked, leaning back in his chair and gazing at her from sombre eyes. Sometimes he thought she looked better on the stage than she did off it, and sometimes he thought the
