The Tragic Muse (London & New York: Macmillan & Co., 1890)/Volume 3/Chapter 10
X.
Nick Dormer had for the hour quite taken up his abode at his studio, where Biddy usually arrived after breakfast to give him news of the state of affairs in Calcutta Gardens and where many letters and telegrams were now addressed to him. Among such missives, on the morning of the Saturday on which Peter Sherringham had promised to dine at the other house, was a note from Miriam Rooth, informing Nick that if he should not telegraph to put her off she would turn up about half-past eleven, probably with her mother, for just one more sitting. She added that it was a nervous day for her and that she couldn't keep still, so that it would really be very kind to let her come to him as a refuge. She wished to stay away from the theatre, where everything was now settled (or so much the worse for the others if it wasn't), till the evening, but if she were left to herself should be sure to go there. It would keep her quiet and soothe her to sit—he could keep her quiet (he was such a blessing that way!) at any time. Therefore she would give him two or three hours—or rather she would ask him for them—if he didn't positively turn her from the door.
It had not been definite to Nick that he wanted another sitting at all for the slight work, as he held it to be, that Miriam had already helped him to achieve. He regarded this work as a kind of pictorial obiter dictum: he had made what he could of it and would have been at a loss to see how he could make more. If it was not finished, this was because it was not finishable; at any rate he had said all he had to say in that particular phrase. Nick Dormer, as it happened, was not just now in the highest spirits; his imagination had within two or three days become conscious of a check which he tried to explain by the idea of a natural reaction. Any important change, any new selection in one's life was exciting, and exaggerate that importance and one's own as little as one would, there was an inevitable strong emotion in renouncing, in the face of considerable opposition, one sort of responsibility for another sort. That made life not perhaps necessarily joyous, but decidedly thrilling, for the hour; and it was all very well till the thrill abated. When this occurred, as it inevitably would, the romance and the poetry of the thing would be exchanged for the flatness and the prose. It was to these latter elements that Nick Dormer had waked up pretty wide on this particular morning; and the prospect was not appreciably more blooming from the fact that he had warned himself in advance that it would be dull. He had known how dull it would be, but now he would have time to learn that even better. A reaction was a reaction, but it was not after all a catastrophe. A part of its privilege would be to make him ask himself if he had not committed a great mistake; that privilege would doubtless even remain within the limits of its nature in leading him to reply to this question in the affirmative. But he would live to withdraw such a concession—this was the first thing to bear in mind.
He was occupied, even while he dressed, in the effort to get forward mentally with some such retractation when, by the first post, Miriam's note arrived. At first it did little to help him in his effort, for it made him contrast her eagerness with his own want of alacrity and ask himself what the deuce he should do with her. Ambition, with her, was always on the charge, and she was not a person to conceive that others might in bad moments listen for the trumpet in vain. It would never have occurred to her that only the day before he had spent a portion of the afternoon quite at the bottom of the hill. He had in fact turned into the National Gallery and had wandered about there for more than one hour, and it was just while he did so that the immitigable recoil had begun perversely to set in. And the perversity was all the greater from the circumstance that if the experience was depressing it was not because he had been discouraged beyond measure by the sight of the grand things that had been done—things so much grander than any that would ever bear his signature. That variation he was duly acquainted with and should taste in abundance again. What had happened to him, as he passed on this occasion from Titian to Rubens and from Gainsborough to Rembrandt, was that he found himself calling the whole art literally into question. What was it after all, at the best, and why had people given it so high a place? Its weakness, its narrowness appeared to him; tacitly blaspheming he looked at several world-famous performances with a lustreless eye. That is he blasphemed if it were blasphemy to say to himself that, with all respect, they were a poor business, only well enough in their small way. The force that produced them was not one of the greatest forces in human affairs; their place was inferior and their connection with the life of man casual and slight. They represented so inadequately the idea, and it was the idea that won the race, that in the long run came in first. He had incontestably been in much closer relation to the idea a few months before than he was to-day: it made up a great deal for the bad side of politics that they were after all a clumsy system for applying and propagating the idea. The love of it had really been at certain hours at the bottom of his disposition to follow them up; though this had not been what he used to talk of most with his political comrades or even with Julia. Certainly, political as Julia was, he had not conferred with her much about the idea. However, this might have been his own fault quite as much as hers, and she probably took such an enthusiasm for granted—she took such a tremendous lot of things for granted. On the other hand he had put this enthusiasm forward frequently in his many discussions with Gabriel Nash, with the effect, it is true, of making that worthy scoff transcendentally at what he was pleased to term his hypocrisy. Gabriel maintained precisely that there were more ideas, more of those that man lived by, in a single room of the National Gallery than in all the statutes of Parliament. Nick had replied to this more than once that the determination of what man did live by was required; to which Nash had retorted (and it was very rarely that he quoted Scripture) that it was at any rate not by bread-and-butter alone. The statutes of Parliament gave him bread-and-butter tout au plus.
Nick Dormer at present had no pretension of trying this question over again; he reminded himself that his ambiguity was subjective, as the philosophers said; the result of a mood which in due course would be at the mercy of another mood. It made him curse, and cursing, as a finality, was shaky; so he would throw out a platform beyond it. The time far beyond others to do one's work was when it didn't seem worth doing, for then one gave it a brilliant chance, that of resisting the stiffest test of all—the test of striking one as very bad. To do the most when there would be the least to be got by it was to be most in the true spirit of production. One thing at any rate was very certain, Nick reflected: nothing on earth would induce him to change back again; not even if this twilight of the soul should last for the rest of his days. He hardened himself in his posture with a good conscience which, had they had a glimpse of it, would have made him still more diverting to those who already thought him so; but now by good fortune Miriam suddenly knocked together the little bridge that was wanted to carry him over to more elastic ground. If he had made his sketch it was a proof that he had done her, and that he had done her flashed upon him as a sign that she would be still more feasible. He found his platform, as I have called it, and for a moment in his relief he danced upon it. He sent out a telegram to Balaklava Place requesting his beautiful sitter by no manner of means to fail him. When his servant came back it was to usher into the studio Peter Sherringham, whom the man had apparently found at the door.
The hour was so early for social intercourse that Nick immediately guessed his visitor had come on some rare errand; but this inference was instantly followed by the reflection that Peter might after all only wish to make up by present zeal for not having been near him before. He forgot that, as as he had subsequently learned from Biddy, their foreign or all but foreign cousin had spent an hour in Rosedale Road, missing him there but pulling out Miriam's portrait, the day of his own hurried visit to Beauclere. These young men were not on a ceremonious footing and it was not in Nick's nature to keep a record of civilities rendered or omitted; nevertheless he had been vaguely conscious that during a stay in London, on Peter's part, which apparently was stretching itself out, he and his kinsman had foregathered less than of yore. It was indeed an absorbing moment in the career of each, but at the same time that he recognized this truth Nick remembered that it was not impossible Peter might have taken upon himself to resent some supposititious failure of consideration for Julia; though this would have been stupid, and the newly-appointed minister (to he had forgotten where) cultivated a finer habit. Nick held that as he had treated Julia with studious generosity she had nothing whatever to reproach him with; so her brother had therefore still less. It was at any rate none of her brother's business. There were only two things that would have made Nick lukewarm about disposing in a few frank words of all this: one of them his general hatred of talking of his private affairs (a reluctance in which he and Peter were well matched); and the other a particular sentiment which would have involved more of a confession and which could not be otherwise described than as a perception that the most definite and even most pleasant consequence of the collapse of his engagement was, as it happened, an extreme consciousness of freedom. Nick Dormer's observation was of a different sort from his cousin's; he noted much less the signs of the hour and kept altogether a looser register of life. Nevertheless, just as one of our young men had during these days in London found the air peopled with personal influences, the concussion of human atoms, so the other, though only asking to live without too many questions and work without too many disasters, to be glad and sorry in short on easy terms, had become aware of a certain social tightness, of the fact that life is crowded and passion is restless, accident frequent and community inevitable. Everybody with whom one had relations had other relations too, and even optimism was a mixture and peace an embroilment. The only chance was to let everything be embroiled but one's temper and everything spoiled but one's work. It must be added that Nick sometimes took precautions against irritation which were in excess of the danger, as departing travellers, about to whiz through foreign countries, study phrase-books for combinations of words they will never use. He was at home in the brightness of things—his longest excursions across the border were short. He had a dim sense that Peter considered that he made him uncomfortable and might have come now to tell him so; in which case he should be sorry for Peter in various ways. But as soon as his visitor began to speak Nick felt suspicion fade into old friendliness, and this in spite of the fact that Peter's speech had a slightly exaggerated promptitude, like the promptitude of business, which might have denoted self-consciousness. To Nick it quickly appeared better to be glad than to be sorry: this simple argument was more than sufficient to make him glad Peter was there.
"My dear Nick, it's an unpardonable hour, isn't it? I wasn't even sure you'd be up, and yet I had to risk it because my hours are numbered. I'm going away to-morrow," Peter went on; "I've a thousand things to do. I've had no talk with you this time such as we used to have of old (it's an irreparable loss, but it's your fault, you know), and as I've got to rush about all day I thought I'd just catch you before any one else does."
"Some one has already caught me, but there's plenty of time," Nick returned.
Peter stared a moment, as if he were going to ask a question; then he thought better of this and said: "I see, I see. I'm sorry to say I've only a few minutes at best."
"Man of crushing responsibilities, you've come to humiliate me!" Nick exclaimed. "I know all about it."
"It's more than I do then. That's not what I've come for, but I shall be delighted if I humiliate you a little by the way. I've two things in mind, and I'll mention the most difficult first. I came here the other day—the day after my arrival in town."
"Ah, yes, so you did; it was very good of you," Nick interrupted, as if he remembered. "I ought to have returned your visit, or left a card or written my name or something, in Great Stanhope Street, oughtn't I? You hadn't got this new thing then, or I would have done so."
Peter eyed him a moment. "I say, what's the matter with you? Am I really unforgivable for having taken that liberty?"
"What liberty?" Nick looked now as if there were nothing whatever the matter with him, and indeed his visitor's allusion was not clear to him. He was thinking only for the instant of Biddy, of whom and whose secret inclinations Grace had insisted on talking to him. They were none of his business, and if he would not for the world have let the girl herself suspect that he had violent lights on what was most screened and curtained in her, much less would he have made Peter a clumsy present of this knowledge. Grace had a queer theory that Peter treated Biddy badly—treated them all, somehow, badly; but Grace's zeal (she had plenty of it, though she affected all sorts of fine indifference) almost always took the form of being wrong. Nick wanted to do only what Biddy would thank him for, and he knew very well what she wouldn't. She wished him and Peter to be great friends, and the only obstacle to this was that Peter was too much of a diplomatist. Peter made him for an instant think of her and of the hour they had lately spent together in the studio in his absence—an hour of which Biddy had given him a history full of detail and of omissions; and this in turn brought Nick's imagination back to his visitor's own side of the matter. That complexity of things of which the sense had lately increased with him, and to which it was owing that any thread one might take hold of would probably lead one to something discomfortable, was illustrated by the fact that while poor Biddy was thinking of Peter it was ten to one that poor Peter was thinking of Miriam Rooth. All this danced before Nick's intellectual vision for a space briefer than my too numerous words.
"I pitched into your treasures—I rummaged among your canvases," Peter said. "Biddy had nothing whatever to do with it—she maintained an attitude of irreproachable reserve. It has been on my conscience all these days, and I ought to have done penance before. I have been putting it off partly because I am so ashamed of my indiscretion. Que voulez-vous, my dear Nick? My provocation was great. I heard you had been painting Miss Rooth, so that I couldn't restrain my curiosity. I simply went into that corner and struck out there—a trifle wildly, no doubt. I dragged the young lady to the light—your sister turned pale as she saw me. It was a good deal like breaking open one of your letters, wasn't it? However, I assure you it's all right, for I congratulate you both on your style and on your correspondent."
"You're as clever, as witty, as humorous as ever, old boy," Nick rejoined, going himself into the corner designated by his companion and laying his hands on the same canvas. "Your curiosity is the highest possible tribute to my little attempt, and your sympathy sets me right with myself. There is she again," Nick went on, thrusting the picture into an empty frame; "you shall see her whether you wish to or not."
"Right with yourself? You don't mean to say you've been wrong!" Sherringham returned, standing opposite the portrait.
"Oh, I don't know; I've been kicking up such a row; anything is better than a row."
"She's awfully good—she's awfully true," said Sherringham. "You've done more to it, since the other day; you've put in several things."
"Yes, but I've worked distractedly. I've not altogether conformed to the celebrated recommendation about being off with the old love."
"With the old love?" Sherringham repeated, looking hard at the picture.
"Before you are on with the new!" Nick had no sooner uttered these words than he coloured; it occurred to him that Peter would probably think he was alluding to Julia. He therefore added quickly: "It isn't so easy to cease to represent an affectionate constituency. Really, most of my time for a fortnight has been giving up to letter-writing. They've all been unexpectedly charming. I should have thought they would have loathed and despised me. But not a bit of it; they cling to me fondly—they struggle with me tenderly. I've been down to talk with them about it, and we've passed the most sociable, delightful hours. I've designated my successor; I've felt a good deal like the Emperor Charles the Fifth when about to retire to the monastery of Yuste. The more I've seen of them in this way the more I've liked them, and they declare it has been the same with themselves as regards me. We spend our time in assuring each other that we haven't begun to know each other till now. In short, it's all wonderfully jolly, but it isn't business. C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre."
"They're not so charming as they might be if they don't offer to keep you and let you paint."
"They do, almost; it's fantastic," said Nick. "Remember they haven't seen any of my painting yet."
"Well, I'm sorry for you; we live in too enlightened an age," Peter declared. "You can't suffer for art. Your experience is interesting; it seems to show that, at the tremendous pitch of civilization we've reached, you can't suffer from anything but hunger."
"I shall doubtless do that in abundance."
"Never, never, when you paint as well as this."
"Oh, come, you're too good to be true," Nick replied. "But where did you learn that one's larder is full in proportion as one's work is fine?"
Peter gave him no satisfaction on this curious point—he only continued to look at the picture; after which, in a moment, he said: "I'll give you your price for it on the spot."
"Dear boy, you're so magnanimous that you shall have it for nothing!" Nick exclaimed, passing his arm into his companion's. Peter was silent at first. "Why do you call me magnanimous?"
"Oh, bless iny soul, it's hers—I forget!" laughed Nick, failing in his turn to answer the other's inquiry. "But you shall have another."
"Another? Are you going to do another?"
"This very morning. That is I shall begin it. I've heard from her; she's coming to sit—a short time hence."
Peter turned away a little at this, releasing himself, and, as if the movement had been an effect of Nick's words, looked at his watch earnestly, to dissipate that appearance. He fell back, to consider the picture from further off. "The more you do her the better; she has all the qualities of a great model. From that point of view it's a pity she has another trade: she might make so good a thing of this one. But how shall you do her again?" Sherringham continued, ingenuously.
"Oh, I can scarcely say; we'll arrange something; we'll talk it over. It's extraordinary how well she enters into what one wants: she knows more than one does one's self. She isn't the first comer. However, you know all about that, since you invented her, didn't you? That's what she says; she's awfully sweet on you," Nick pursued. "What I ought to do is to try something as different as possible from that thing; not the sibyl, the muse, the tremendous creature, but the charming woman, the person one knows, in different geor, as she appears en ville, as she calls it. I'll do something really serious and send it to you out there with my respects. It will remind you of home, and perhaps a little even of me. If she knows it's for you she'll throw herself into it in the right spirit. Leave it to us, my dear fellow; we'll turn out something good."
"It's jolly to hear you; but I shall send you a cheque," said Peter.
"I suppose it's all right in your position, but you're too proud," his kinsman answered.
"What do you mean by my position?"
"Your exaltation, your high connection with the country, your treating with sovereign powers as the representative of a sovereign power. Isn't that what they call 'em?"
Sherringham, who had turned again toward his companion, listened to this with his eyes fixed on. Nick's face, while at the same time he once more drew forth his watch. "Brute!" he exclaimed familiarly, at the same time dropping his eyes on the watch. "At what time did you say you expected your sitter?"
"Oh, we've plenty of time; don't be afraid of letting me see you agitated by her presence."
"Brute!" Sherringham again ejaculated.
This friendly personal note cleared the air, made the communication between the two men closer. "Stay with me and talk to me," said Nick; "I dare say it's good for me. Heaven knows when I shall see you so independently again."
"Have you got something more to show me, then—some other work?" Sherringham asked.
"Must I bribe you by setting my signboards in a row? You know what I've done; by which I mean of course you know what I haven't done. My work, as you are so good as to call it, has hitherto been horrible rot. I've had no time, no opportunity, no continuity. I must go and sit down in a corner and learn my alphabet. That thing isn't good; what I shall do for you won't be good. Don't protest, my dear fellow; nothing will be fit to look at for a long time. And think of my ridiculous age. As the populace say (or don't they say it?) it's a rum go. It won't be amusing."
"Oh, you're so clever you'll get on fast," Sherringham replied, trying to think how he could most directly disobey his companion's injunction not to protest.
"I mean it won't be amusing for others," said Nick, unperturbed by this violation. "They want results, and small blame to them."
"Well, whatever you do, don't talk like Mr. Gabriel Nash," Peter went on. "Sometimes I think you're just going to."
Nick stared a moment. "Why, he never would have said that. 'They want results, the damned fools'—that would have been more in his key."
"It's the difference of a nuance. And are you extraordinarily happy?" Peter added, as Nick now obliged him by arranging half a dozen canvases so that he could look at them.
"Not so much so, doubtless, as the artistic life ought to make one; because all one's people are not so infatuated as one's electors. But little by little I'm learning the beauty of obstinacy."
"Your mother's very bad; I lunched with her the day before yesterday."
"Yes, I know—I know," said Nick hastily; "but it's too late—it's too late. I must just peg away here and not mind. I've after all a great advantage in my life."
Sherringham hesitated. "And that would be?"
"Oh, I mean knowing what I want to do: that's everything, you know."
"It's an advantage however that you've only just come in for, isn't it?"
"Yes, but having waited only makes me prize it the more. I've got it now; and it makes up, for the present, for the absence of some other things."
Again Sherringham was silent awhile. "That sounds a little flat," he remarked at last.
"It depends upon what you compare it with. It's rather more pointed than the House of Commons."
"Oh, I never thought I should like that."
There was another pause, during which Nick moved about the room, turning up old sketches to see if he had anything more to show his visitor, while Sherringham continued to look at the unfinished and in some cases, as it seemed to him, unpromising productions already submitted to his attention. They were much less interesting than the portrait of Miriam Rooth and, it would have appeared, much less significant of ability. For that particular effort Nick's talent had taken an unprecedented spring. This was the reflection that Peter made, as he had made it intensely before; but the words he presently uttered had no visible connection with it. They only consisted of the abrupt inquiry: "Have you heard anything from Julia?"
"Not a syllable. Have you?"
"Dear, no; she never writes to me."
"But won't she on the occasion of your promotion?"
"I dare say not," said Peter: and this was the only reference to Mrs. Dallow that passed between her brother and her late intended. It left a slight agitation of the atmosphere, which Sherringham proceeded to allay by an allusion comparatively speaking more relevant. He expressed disappointment that Biddy should not have come in; having had an idea that she was always in Rosedale Road of a morning. That was the other moiety of his present errand—the wish to see her and give her a message for Lady Agnes, upon whom at so early an hour he had not presumed to intrude in Calcutta Gardens. Nick replied that Biddy did in point of fact almost always turn up, and for the most part early; she came to wish him good morning and start him for the day. She was a devoted Electra, laying a cool, healing hand on a distracted Orestes. He reminded Peter however that he would have a chance of seeing her that evening, and of seeing Lady Agnes; for wasn't he to do them the honour of dining in Calcutta Gardens? Biddy, the day before, had arrived full of that excitement. Peter explained that this was exactly the sad subject of his actual démarche: the project of the dinner in Calcutta Gardens had, to his exceeding regret, fallen to pieces. The fact was (didn't Nick know it?) the night had been suddenly and perversely fixed for Miriam's premiere, and he was under a definite engagement with her not to stay away from it. To add to the bore of the thing he was obliged to return to Paris the very next morning. He was quite awfully sorry, for he had promised Lady Agnes: he didn't understand then about Miriam's affair, in regard to which he had given a previous pledge. He was more sorry than he could say, but he could never fail Miss Rooth: he had professed from the first an interest in her which he must live up to a little more. This was his last chance—he hadn't been near her at the trying time she first produced herself. And the second night of the play wouldn't do—it must be the first or nothing. Besides, he couldn't wait over till Monday.
While Peter enumerated these complications his companion was occupied in polishing with a cloth a palette that he had just been scraping. "I see what you mean—I'm very sorry too," said Nick. "I'm sorry you can't give my mother this joy—I give her so little."
"My dear fellow, you might give her a little more. It's rather too much to expect me to make up for your omissions!"
Nick looked at Peter with a moment's fixedness while he rubbed his palette; and for that moment he felt the temptation to reply: "There's a way you could do that, to a considerable extent—I think you guess it!—which wouldn't be intrinsically disagreeable." But the impulse passed, without expressing itself in speech, and he simply answered: "You can make this all clear to Biddy when she comes, and she'll make it clear to my mother."
"Poor little Biddy!" Sherringham mentally exclaimed, thinking of the girl with that job before her; but what he articulated was that this was exactly why he had come to the studio. He had inflicted his company on Lady Agnes on Thursday and had partaken of a meal with her, but he had not seen Biddy, though he had waited for her, hoping she would come in. Now he would wait for her again—she was thoroughly worth it.
"Patience, patience, you've always me," said Nick; to which he subjoined: "If it's a question of going to the play I scarcely see why you shouldn't dine at my mother's all the same. People go to the play after dinner."
"Yes, but it wouldn't be fair, it wouldn't be decent: it's a case when I must be in my seat from the rise of the curtain. I should force your mother to dine an hour earlier than usual, and then, in return for this courtesy, go off to my entertainment at eight o'clock, leaving her and Grace and Biddy languishing there. I wish I had proposed in time that they should go with me," Peter continued, not very ingenuously.
"You might do that still," Nick suggested.
"Oh, at this time of day it would be impossible to get a box."
"I'll speak to Miss Rooth about it, if you like, when she comes," smiled Nick.
"No, it wouldn't do," said Peter, turning away and looking once more at his watch. He made tacitly the addition that still less than asking Lady Agnes, for his convenience, to dine early, would this be decent, would it be fair. His taking Biddy the night he dined with her and with Miss Tressilian had been something very like a violation of those proprieties. He couldn't say this to Nick, who remarked in a moment that it was all right, for Peter's action left him his own freedom.
"Your own freedom?" Peter echoed interrogatively, turning round.
"Why, you see now I can go to the theatre myself."
"Certainly; I hadn't thought of that. You would have been going."
"I gave it up for the prospect of your company."
"Upon my word, you're too good—I don't deserve such sacrifices," said Sherringham, who saw from Nick's face that this was not a figure of speech but the absolute truth. "Didn't it however occur to you that, as it would turn out, I might—that I even naturally would—myself be going?" he added.
Nick broke into a laugh. "It would have occurred to me if I understood a little better—" And he paused, still laughing.
"If you understood a little better what?" Peter demanded.
"Your situation, simply."
Peter looked at him a moment. "Dine with me to-night independently; we'll go to the theatre together, and then you'll understand it."
"With pleasure, with pleasure: we'll have a jolly evening," said Nick.
"Call it jolly if you like. When did you say she was coming?" Peter asked.
"Biddy? Oh, probably, as I tell you, at any moment."
"I mean the great Miriam," Peter replied.
"The great Miriam, if she's punctual, will be here in about forty minutes."
"And will she be likely to find your sister?"
"My dear fellow, that will depend on whether my sister remains to see her."
"Exactly; but the point is whether you'll allow her to remain, isn't it?"
Nick looked slightly mystified. "Why shouldn't she do as she likes?"
"In that case she'll probably go."
"Yes, unless she stays."
"Don't let her," Peter dropped; "send her away." And to explain this he added: "It doesn't seem exactly the right sort of thing, young girls meeting actresses." His explanation in turn struck him as requiring another clause; so he went on: "At least it isn't thought the right sort of thing abroad, and even in England my foreign ideas stick to me."
Even with this amplification however his proposition evidently still appeared to his companion to have a flaw; which, after he had considered it a moment, Nick exposed in the simple words: "Why, you originally introduced them, in Paris—Biddy and Miss Rooth. Didn't they meet at your rooms and fraternize, and wasn't that much more abroad than this?"
"So they did, but she didn't like it," Peter answered, suspecting that for a diplomatist he looked foolish.
"Miss Rooth didn't like it?" Nick persisted.
"That I confess I've forgotten. Besides, she was not an actress then. What I remember is that Biddy wasn't particularly pleased with her."
"Why, she thought her wonderful—praised her to the skies. I remember too."
"She didn't like her as a woman; she praised her as an actress."
"I thought you said she wasn't an actress then," Nick rejoined.
Peter hesitated. "Oh, Biddy thought so. She has seen her since, moreover. I took her the other night, and her curiosity's satisfied."
"It's not of any consequence, and if there's a reason for it I'll bundle her off directly. But the great Miriam seems such a kind, good woman."
"So she is, charming—charming," said Peter, looking hard at Nick.
"Here comes Biddy now," this young man went on. "I hear her at the door; you can warn her yourself."
"It isn't a question of 'warning'—that's not in the least my idea. But I'll take Biddy away," said Peter.
"That will be still more energetic."
"Oh, it's simply selfish—I like her company." Peter had turned as if to go to the door to meet the girl; but he quickly checked himself, lingering in the middle of the room, and the next instant Biddy had come in. When she saw him there she also stopped.