, arrest her development. Then came worrying
retorts to that, chief among which was the sense that to his artistic
conscience arresting her development would be a plan combining on his
part fatuity, not to say imbecility, with baseness. It was exactly to
her development the poor girl had the greatest right, and he shouldn't
really alter anything by depriving her of it. Wasn't she the artist to
the tips of her tresses--the ambassadress never in the world--and
wouldn't she take it out in something else if one were to make her
deviate? So certain was that demonic gift to insist ever on its own.

Besides, _could_ one make her deviate? If she had no disposition to
philander what was his warrant for supposing she could be corrupted into
respectability? How could the career--his career--speak to a nature that
had glimpses as vivid as they were crude of such a different range and
for which success meant quite another sauce to the dish? Would the
brilliancy of marrying Peter Sherringham be such a bribe to
relinquishment? How could he think so without pretensions of the sort he
pretended exactly not to flaunt?--how could he put himself forward as so
high a prize? Relinquishment of the opportunity to exercise a rare
talent was not, in the nature of things, an easy effort to a young lady
who was herself presumptuous as well as ambitious. Besides, she might
eat her cake and have it--might make her fortune both on the stage and
in the world. Successful actresses had ended by marrying dukes, and was
not that better than remaining obscure and marrying a commoner? There
were moments when he tried to pronounce the girl's "gift" not a force to
reckon with; there was so little to show for it as yet that the caprice
of believing in it would perhaps suddenly leave him. But his conviction
that it was real was too uneasy to make such an experiment peaceful, and
he came back, moreover, to his deepest impression--that of her being of
the inward mould for which the only consistency is the play of genius.
Hadn't Madame Carre declared at the last that she could "do anything"?
It was true that if Madame Carre had been mistaken in the first place
she might also be mistaken in the second. But in this latter case she
would be mistaken with him--and such an error would be too like a truth.

How, further, shall we exactly measure for him--Sherringham felt the
discomfort of the advantage Miriam had of him--the advantage of her
presenting herself in a ligh