llow would
probably hear of this and triumph with a fresh sense of how right she
had been; but the reflexion only made him sigh resignedly, so true it
struck him as being that there are some things explanation can never
better, can never touch.

Miriam brought Basil Dashwood once to see her portrait, and Basil, who
commended it in general, directed his criticism mainly to two
points--its not yet being finished and its not having gone into that
year's Academy. The young actor audibly panted; he felt the short breath
of Miriam's rapidity, the quick beat of her success, and, looking at
everything now from the standpoint of that speculation, could scarcely
contain his impatience at the painter's clumsy slowness. He thought the
latter's second attempt much better than his first, but somehow it ought
by that time to be shining in the eye of the public. He put it to their
friend with an air of acuteness--he had those felicities--that in every
great crisis there is nothing like striking while the iron is hot. He
even betrayed the conviction that by putting on a spurt Nick might wind
up the job and still get the Academy people to take him in. Basil knew
some of them; he all but offered to speak to them--the case was so
exceptional; he had no doubt he could get something done. Against the
appropriation of the work by Peter Sherringham he explicitly and loudly
protested, in spite of the homeliest recommendations of silence from
Miriam; and it was indeed easy to guess how such an arrangement would
interfere with his own conception of the eventual right place for the
two portraits--the vestibule of the theatre, where every one going in
and out would see them suspended face to face and surrounded by
photographs, artistically disposed, of the young actress in a variety of
characters. Dashwood showed superiority in his jump to the contention
that so exhibited the pictures would really help to draw. Considering
the virtue he attributed to Miriam the idea was exempt from narrow
prejudice.

Moreover, though a trifle feverish, he was really genial; he repeated
more than once, "Yes, my dear sir, you've done it this time." This was a
favourite formula with him; when some allusion was made to the girl's
success he greeted it also with a comfortable "This time she _has_ done
it." There was ever a hint of fine judgement and far calculation in his
tone. It appeared before he went that this time even he himself had done
it--he had taken up some