he's so poisoned--Mr. Dormer vividly puts it--as
to require a strong antidote; but he has never spoken to me as if he
really expected me to listen to him, and he's the more of a gentleman
from that fact. He knows we haven't a square foot of common ground--that
a grasshopper can't set up a house with a fish. So he has taken care to
say to me only more than he can possibly mean. That makes it stand just
for nothing."

"Did he say more than he can possibly mean when he took formal leave of
you yesterday--for ever and ever?" the old woman cried.

On which Nick re-enforced her. "And don't you call that--his taking
formal leave--a sacrifice?"

"Oh he took it all back, his sacrifice, before he left the house."

"Then has that no meaning?" demanded Mrs. Rooth.

"None that I can make out," said her daughter.

"Ah I've no patience with you: you can be stupid when you will--you can
be even that too!" the poor lady groaned.

"What mamma wishes me to understand and to practise is the particular
way to be artful with Mr. Sherringham," said Miriam. "There are
doubtless depths of wisdom and virtue in it. But I see only one
art--that of being perfectly honest."

"I like to hear you talk--it makes you live, brings you out," Nick
contentedly dropped. "And you sit beautifully still. All I want to say
is please continue to do so: remain exactly as you are--it's rather
important--for the next ten minutes."

"We're washing our dirty linen before you, but it's all right," the girl
returned, "because it shows you what sort of people we are, and that's
what you need to know. Don't make me vague and arranged and fine in this
new view," she continued: "make me characteristic and real; make life,
with all its horrid facts and truths, stick out of me. I wish you could
put mother in too; make us live there side by side and tell our little
story. 'The wonderful actress and her still more wonderful mamma'--don't
you think that's an awfully good subject?"

Mrs. Rooth, at this, cried shame on her daughter's wanton humour,
professing that she herself would never accept so much from Nick's good
nature, and Miriam settled it that at any rate he was some day and in
some way to do her mother, _really_ do her, and so make her, as one of
the funniest persons that ever was, live on through the ages.

"She doesn't believe Mr. Sherringham wants to marry me any more than you
do," the girl, taking up her dispute again after a moment, represented
to Nic