hurry I'm tired! I had better have a
cab; please call that one," she added, looking about her.

They were in a straight, blank, ugly street, where the small, cheap,
grey-faced houses had no expression save that of a rueful, unconsoled
acknowledgment of the universal want of identity. They would have
constituted a "terrace" if they could, but they had dolefully given it
up. Even a hansom that loitered across the end of the vista turned a
sceptical back upon it, so that Sherringham had to lift his voice in a
loud appeal. He stood with Biddy watching the cab approach them. "This
is one of the charming things you'll remember," she said, turning her
eyes to the general dreariness from the particular figure of the
vehicle, which was antiquated and clumsy. Before he could reply she had
lightly stepped into the cab; but as he answered, "Most assuredly it
is," and prepared to follow her she quickly closed the apron.

"I must go alone; you've lots of things to do--it's all right"; and
through the aperture in the roof she gave the driver her address. She
had spoken with decision, and Peter fully felt now that she wished to
get away from him. Her eyes betrayed it, as well as her voice, in a
look, a strange, wandering ray that as he stood there with his hand on
the cab he had time to take from her. "Good-bye, Peter," she smiled; and
as the thing began to rumble away he uttered the same tepid, ridiculous
farewell.

XLIV

At the entrance of Miriam and her mother Nick, in the studio, had
stopped whistling, but he was still gay enough to receive them with
every appearance of warmth. He thought it a poor place, ungarnished,
untapestried, a bare, almost grim workshop, with all its revelations and
honours still to come. But his visitors smiled on it a good deal in the
same way in which they had smiled on Bridget Dormer when they met her at
the door: Mrs. Rooth because vague, prudent approbation was the habit of
her foolish face--it was ever the least danger; and Miriam because, as
seemed, she was genuinely glad to find herself within the walls of which
she spoke now as her asylum. She broke out in this strain to her host
almost as soon as she had crossed the threshold, commending his
circumstances, his conditions of work, as infinitely happier than her
own. He was quiet, independent, absolute, free to do what he liked as he
liked it, shut up in his little temple with his altar and his divinity;
not hustled about in a mob of peo