can play Shakespeare. I want to play Shakespeare," Miriam
made known.

"That's fortunate, as in English you haven't any one else to play."

"But he's so great--and he's so pure!" said Mrs. Rooth.

"That indeed seems the saving of you," Madame Carre returned.

"You think me actually pretty bad, don't you?" the girl demanded with
her serious face.

"_Mon Dieu, que vous dirai-je?_ Of course you're rough; but so was I at
your age. And if you find your voice it may carry you far. Besides, what
does it matter what I think? How can I judge for your English public?"

"How shall I find my voice?" asked Miriam Rooth.

"By trying. _Il n'y a que ca_. Work like a horse, night and day.
Besides, Mr. Sherringham, as he says, will help you."

That gentleman, hearing his name, turned round and the girl appealed to
him. "Will you help me really?"

"To find her voice," said Madame Carre.

"The voice, when it's worth anything, comes from the heart; so I suppose
that's where to look for it," Gabriel Nash suggested.

"Much you know; you haven't got any!" Miriam retorted with the first
scintillation of gaiety she had shown on this occasion.

"Any voice, my child?" Mr. Nash inquired.

"Any heart--or any manners!"

Peter Sherringham made the secret reflexion that he liked her better
lugubrious, as the note of pertness was not totally absent from her mode
of emitting these few words. He was irritated, moreover, for in the
brief conference he had just had with the young lady's introducer he had
had to meet the rather difficult call of speaking of her hopefully. Mr.
Nash had said with his bland smile, "And what impression does my young
friend make?"--in respect to which Peter's optimism felt engaged by an
awkward logic. He answered that he recognised promise, though he did
nothing of the sort;--at the same time that the poor girl, both with the
exaggerated "points" of her person and the vanity of her attempt at
expression, constituted a kind of challenge, struck him as a subject for
inquiry, a problem, an explorable tract. She was too bad to jump at and
yet too "taking"--perhaps after all only vulgarly--to overlook,
especially when resting her tragic eyes on him with the trust of her
deep "Really?" This note affected him as addressed directly to his
honour, giving him a chance to brave verisimilitude, to brave ridicule
even a little, in order to show in a special case what he had always
maintained in general, that the direction of