ple, having to posture and grin to pit
and gallery, to square himself at every step with insufferable
conventions and with the ignorance and vanity of others. He was
blissfully alone.

"Mercy, how you do abuse your fine profession! I'm sure I never urged
you to adopt it!" Mrs. Rooth cried, in real bewilderment, to her
daughter.

"She was abusing mine still more the other day," joked Nick--"telling me
I ought to be ashamed of it and of myself."

"Oh I never know from one moment to the other--I live with my heart in
my mouth," sighed the old woman.

"Aren't you quiet about the great thing--about my personal behaviour?"
Miriam smiled. "My improprieties are all of the mind."

"I don't know what you _call_ your personal behaviour," her mother
objected.

"You would very soon if it were not what it is."

"And I don't know why you should wish to have it thought you've a wicked
mind," Mrs. Rooth agreeably grumbled.

"Yes, but I don't see very well how I can make you understand that. At
any rate," Miriam pursued with her grand eyes on Nick, "I retract what I
said the other day about Mr. Dormer. I've no wish to quarrel with him on
the way he has determined to dispose of his life, because after all it
does suit me very well. It rests me, this little devoted corner; oh it
rests me! It's out of the row and the dust, it's deliciously still and
they can't get at me. Ah when art's like this, _a la bonne heure_!" And
she looked round on such a presentment of "art" in a splendid way that
produced amusement on the young man's part at its contrast with the
humble fact. Miriam shone upon him as if she liked to be the cause of
his mirth and went on appealing to him: "You'll always let me come here
for an hour, won't you, to take breath--to let the whirlwind pass? You
needn't trouble yourself about me; I don't mean to impose on you in the
least the necessity of painting me, though if that's a manner of helping
you to get on you may be sure it will always be open to you. Do what you
like with me in that respect; only let me sit here on a high stool,
keeping well out of your way, and see what you happen to be doing. I'll
tell you my own adventures when you want to hear them."

"The fewer adventures you have to tell the better, my dear," said Mrs.
Rooth; "and if Mr. Dormer keeps you quiet he'll add ten years to my
life."

"It all makes an interesting comment on Mr. Dormer's own quietness, on
his independence and sweet solitude," Nick