it? Who'll interpret them? Who'll
manage a style like that--the style of which the rhapsodies she has just
repeated are a specimen? Whom have you got that one has ever heard of?"

"Oh you'll hear of a good deal when once she gets started," Dashwood
cheerfully contended.

Madame Carre looked at him a moment; then, "I feel that you'll become
very bad," she said to Miriam. "I'm glad I shan't see it."

"People will do things for me--I'll make them," the girl declared. "I'll
stir them up so that they'll have ideas."

"What people, pray?"

"Ah terrible woman!" Peter theatrically groaned.

"We translate your pieces--there will be plenty of parts," Basil
Dashwood said.

"Why then go out of the door to come in at the window?--especially if
you smash it! An English arrangement of a French piece is a pretty woman
with her back turned."

"Do you really want to keep her?" Sherringham asked of Madame
Carre--quite as if thinking for a moment that this after all might be
possible.

She bent her strange eyes on him. "No, you're all too queer together. We
couldn't be bothered with you and you're not worth it."

"I'm glad it's 'together' that we're queer then--we can console each
other."

"If you only would; but you don't seem to! In short I don't understand
you--I give you up. But it doesn't matter," said the old woman wearily,
"for the theatre's dead and even you, _ma toute-belle_, won't bring it
to life. Everything's going from bad to worse, and I don't care what
becomes of you. You wouldn't understand us here and they won't
understand you there, and everything's impossible, and no one's a whit
the wiser, and it's not of the least consequence. Only when you raise
your arms lift them just a little higher," Madame Carre added.

"My mother will be happier _chez nous_" said Miriam, throwing her arms
straight up and giving them a noble tragic movement.

"You won't be in the least in the right path till your mother's in
despair."

"Well, perhaps we can bring that about even in London," Sherringham
patiently laughed.

"Dear Mrs. Rooth--she's great fun," Mr. Dashwood as imperturbably
dropped.

Miriam transferred the dark weight of her gaze to him as if she were
practising. "_You_ won't upset her, at any rate." Then she stood with
her beautiful and fatal mask before her hostess. "I want to do the
modern too. I want to do _le drame_, with intense realistic effects."

"And do you want to look like the portico of the Madelei