not
serious we needn't talk at all; but if you are, with your conception of
what the actor can do, why is it so base to come to the actor's aid,
taking one devotion with another? If I'm so fine I'm worth looking after
a bit, and the place where I'm finest is the place to look after me!"

He had a long pause again, taking her in as it seemed to him he had
never done. "You were never finer than at this minute, in the deepest
domesticity of private life. I've no conception whatever of what the
actor can do, and no theory whatever about the importance of the
theatre. Any infatuation of that sort has completely dropped from me,
and for all I care the theatre may go to the dogs--which I judge it
altogether probably will!"

"You're dishonest, you're ungrateful, you're false!" Miriam flashed. "It
was the theatre brought you here--if it hadn't been for the theatre I
never would have looked at you. It was in the name of the theatre you
first made love to me; it's to the theatre you owe every advantage that,
so far as I'm concerned, you possess."

"I seem to possess a great many!" poor Peter derisively groaned.

"You might avail yourself better of those you have! You make me angry,
but I want to be fair," said the shining creature, "and I can't be
unless you are. You're not fair, nor candid, nor honourable, when you
swallow your words and abjure your faith, when you throw over old
friends and old memories for a selfish purpose."

"'Selfish purpose' is, in your own convenient idiom, _bientot dit_,"
Peter promptly answered. "I suppose you consider that if I truly
esteemed you I should be ashamed to deprive the world of the light of
your genius. Perhaps my esteem isn't of the right quality--there are
different kinds, aren't there? At any rate I've explained to you that I
propose to deprive the world of nothing at all. You shall be celebrated,
_allez_!"

"Vain words, vain words, my dear!" and she turned off again in her
impatience. "I know of course," she added quickly, "that to befool
yourself with such twaddle you must be pretty bad."

"Yes, I'm pretty bad," he admitted, looking at her dismally. "What do
you do with the declaration you made me the other day--the day I found
my cousin here--that you'd take me if I should come to you as one who
had risen high?"

Miriam thought of it. "I remember--the chaff about the honours, the
orders, the stars and garters. My poor foolish friend, don't be so
painfully literal. Don't you k