usiness is the artistic life!" he broke
out with inconsequence, irritated, moreover, at hearing her sound that
trivial note again.

"You're a dear--your charming good sense comes back to you! What do you
want of me, then?"

"I want you for myself--not for others; and now, in time, before
anything's done."

"Why, then, did you bring me here? Everything's done--I feel it
to-night."

"I know the way you should look at it--if you do look at it at all,"
Sherringham conceded.

"That's so easy! I thought you liked the stage so," Miriam artfully
added.

"Don't you want me to be a great swell?"

"And don't you want _me_ to be?"

"You _will_ be--you'll share my glory."

"So will you share mine."

"The husband of an actress? Yes, I see myself that!" Peter cried with a
frank ring of disgust.

"It's a silly position, no doubt. But if you're too good for it why talk
about it? Don't you think I'm important?" she demanded. Her companion
met her eyes and she suddenly said in a different tone: "Ah why should
we quarrel when you've been so kind, so generous? Can't we always be
friends--the truest friends?"

Her voice sank to the sweetest cadence and her eyes were grateful and
good as they rested on him. She sometimes said things with such
perfection that they seemed dishonest, but in this case he was stirred
to an expressive response. Just as he was making it, however, he was
moved to utter other words: "Take care, here's Dashwood!" Mrs. Rooth's
tried attendant was in the doorway. He had come back to say that they
really must relieve him.

BOOK FIFTH

XXII

Mrs. Dallow came up to London soon after the meeting of Parliament; she
made no secret of the fact that she was fond of "town" and that in
present conditions it would of course not have become less attractive to
her. But she prepared to retreat again for the Easter vacation, not to
go back to Harsh, but to pay a couple of country visits. She did not,
however, depart with the crowd--she never did anything with the
crowd--but waited till the Monday after Parliament rose; facing with
composure, in Great Stanhope Street, the horrors, as she had been taught
to consider them, of a Sunday out of the session. She had done what she
could to mitigate them by asking a handful of "stray men" to dine with
her that evening. Several members of this disconsolate class sought
comfort in Great Stanhope Street in the afternoon, and them for the most
part she also invi