Nick bethought himself. "I daresay I've heard of her, but with a good
many other things on my mind I had forgotten it."

"Certainly I can imagine what has been on your mind. She remembers you
at any rate; she repays neglect with sympathy. She wants," said Nash,
"to come and see you."

"'See' me?" It was all for Nick now a wonder.

"To be seen by you--it comes to the same thing. She's really worth
seeing; you must let me bring her; you'll find her very suggestive. That
idea that you should paint her--she appears to consider it a sort of
bargain."

"A bargain?" Our young man entered, as he believed, into the humour of
the thing. "What will she give me?"

"A splendid model. She _is_ splendid."

"Oh then bring her," said Nick.

XXV

Nash brought her, the great modern personage, as he had described her,
the very next day, and it took his friend no long time to test his
assurance that Miriam Rooth was now splendid. She had made an impression
on him ten months before, but it had haunted him only a day, soon
overlaid as it had been with other images. Yet after Nash had talked of
her a while he recalled her better; some of her attitudes, some of her
looks and tones began to hover before him. He was charmed in advance
with the notion of painting her. When she stood there in fact, however,
it seemed to him he had remembered her wrong; the brave, free, rather
grand creature who instantly filled his studio with such an unexampled
presence had so shaken off her clumsiness, the rudeness and crudeness
that had made him pity her, a whole provincial and "second-rate" side.
Miss Rooth was light and bright and direct to-day--direct without being
stiff and bright without being garish. To Nick's perhaps inadequately
sophisticated mind the model, the actress were figures of a vulgar
setting; but it would have been impossible to show that taint less than
this extremely natural yet extremely distinguished aspirant to
distinction. She was more natural even than Gabriel Nash--"nature" was
still Nick's formula for his amusing old friend--and beside her he
appeared almost commonplace.

Nash recognised her superiority with a frankness honourable to both of
them--testifying in this manner to his sense that they were all three
serious beings, worthy to deal with fine realities. She attracted crowds
to her theatre, but to his appreciation of such a fact as that,
important doubtless in its way, there were the limits he had already
ex