s so much?"

"Like you? I loathe you!"

"_Je le vois parbleu bien_!" she lightly returned. "I mean why do you
feel us, judge us, understand us so well? I please you because you see,
because you know; and then for that very reason of my pleasing you must
adapt me to your convenience, you must take me over, as they say. You
admire me as an artist and therefore want to put me into a box in which
the artist will breathe her last. Ah be reasonable; you must let her
live!"

"Let her live? As if I could prevent her living!" Peter cried with
unmistakable conviction. "Even if I did wish how could I prevent a
spirit like yours from expressing itself? Don't talk about my putting
you in a box, for, dearest child, I'm taking you out of one," he all
persuasively explained. "The artist is irrepressible, eternal; she'll be
in everything you are and in everything you do, and you'll go about with
her triumphantly exerting your powers, charming the world, carrying
everything before you."

Miriam's colour rose, through all her artificial surfaces, at this all
but convincing appeal, and she asked whimsically: "Shall you like that?"

"Like my wife to be the most brilliant woman in Europe? I think I can do
with it."

"Aren't you afraid of me?"

"Not a bit."

"Bravely said. How little you know me after all!" sighed the girl.

"I tell the truth," Peter ardently went on; "and you must do me the
justice to admit that I've taken the time to dig deep into my feelings.
I'm not an infatuated boy; I've lived, I've had experience, I've
observed; in short I know what I mean and what I want. It isn't a thing
to reason about; it's simply a need that consumes me. I've put it on
starvation diet, but that's no use--really, it's no use, Miriam," the
young man declared with a ring that spoke enough of his sincerity. "It
is no question of my trusting you; it's simply a question of your
trusting me. You're all right, as I've heard you say yourself; you're
frank, spontaneous, generous; you're a magnificent creature. Just
quietly marry me and I'll manage you."

"'Manage' me?" The girl's inflexion was droll; it made him change
colour.

"I mean I'll give you a larger life than the largest you can get in any
other way. The stage is great, no doubt, but the world's greater. It's a
bigger theatre than any of those places in the Strand. We'll go in for
realities instead of fables, and you'll do them far better than you do
the fables."

Miriam had listen