riam at this moved away from him with a port that resembled what she
sometimes showed on the stage when she turned her young back upon the
footlights and then after a few steps grandly swept round again. This
evolution she performed--it was over in an instant--on the present
occasion; even to stopping short with her eyes upon him and her head
admirably erect. "Surely it's strange," she said, "the way the other
solution never occurs to you."

"The other solution?"

"That _you_ should stay on the stage."

"I don't understand you," her friend gloomed.

"Stay on _my_ stage. Come off your own."

For a little he said nothing; then: "You mean that if I'll do that
you'll have me?"

"I mean that if it were to occur to you to offer me a little sacrifice
on your own side it might place the matter in a slightly more attractive
light."

"Continue to let you act--as my wife?" he appealed. "Is it a real
condition? Am I to understand that those are your terms?"

"I may say so without fear, because you'll never accept them."

"Would you accept them _from_ me?" he demanded; "accept the manly, the
professional sacrifice, see me throw up my work, my prospects--of course
I should have to do that--and simply become your appendage?"

She raised her arms for a prodigious fall. "My dear fellow, you invite
me with the best conscience in the world to become yours."

"The cases are not equal. You'd make of me the husband of an actress. I
should make of you the wife of an ambassador."

"The husband of an actress, _c'est bientot dit_, in that tone of scorn!
If you're consistent," said Miriam, all lucid and hard, "it ought to be
a proud position for you."

"What do you mean, if I'm consistent?"

"Haven't you always insisted on the beauty and interest of our art and
the greatness of our mission? Haven't you almost come to blows with poor
Gabriel Nash about it? What did all that mean if you won't face the
first consequences of your theory? Either it was an enlightened
conviction or it was an empty pretence. If you were only talking
against time I'm glad to know it," she rolled out with a darkening eye.
"The better the cause, it seems to me, the better the deed; and if the
theatre _is_ important to the 'human spirit,' as you used to say so
charmingly, and if into the bargain you've the pull of being so fond of
me, I don't see why it should be monstrous of you to give us your
services in an intelligent, indirect way. Of course if you're