not to haunt the earlier masters,
whose conditions had been so different--later he came to see that it
didn't matter much, especially if one kept away; but he was liable to
accidental deflexions from this theory, liable in particular to feel the
sanctity of the great portraits of the past. These were the things the
most inspiring, in the sense that while generations, while worlds had
come and gone, they seemed far most to prevail and survive and testify.
As he stood before them the perfection of their survival often struck
him as the supreme eloquence, the virtue that included all others,
thanks to the language of art, the richest and most universal. Empires
and systems and conquests had rolled over the globe and every kind of
greatness had risen and passed away, but the beauty of the great
pictures had known nothing of death or change, and the tragic centuries
had only sweetened their freshness. The same faces, the same figures
looked out at different worlds, knowing so many secrets the particular
world didn't, and when they joined hands they made the indestructible
thread on which the pearls of history were strung.

Miriam notified her artist that her theatre was to close on the tenth of
August, immediately after which she was to start, with the company, on a
tremendous tour of the provinces. They were to make a lot of money, but
they were to have no holiday, and she didn't want one; she only wanted
to keep at it and make the most of her limited opportunities for
practice; inasmuch as at that rate, playing but two parts a year--and
such parts: she despised them!--she shouldn't have mastered the
rudiments of her trade before decrepitude would compel her to lay it by.
The first time she came to the studio after her visit with Dashwood she
sprang up abruptly at the end of half an hour, saying she could sit no
more--she had had enough and to spare of it. She was visibly restless
and preoccupied, and though Nick had not waited till now to note that
she had more moods in her list than he had tints on his palette he had
never yet seen her sensibility at this particular pitch. It struck him
rather as a waste of passion, but he was ready to let her go. She looked
round the place as if suddenly tired of it and then said mechanically,
in a heartless London way, while she smoothed down her gloves, "So
you're just going to stay on?" After he had confessed that this was his
dark purpose she continued in the same casual, talk-making