ed to make them true, to set them up in the world, and to-night he
said a good many, especially as to the happiness of cultivating one's
own garden, growing there, in stillness and freedom, certain strong,
pure flowers that would bloom for ever, bloom long after the rank weeds
of the hour were withered and blown away.

It was to keep Miriam Rooth in his eye for his current work that Nick
had come to the play; and she dwelt there all the evening, being
constantly on the stage. He was so occupied in watching her face--for he
now saw pretty clearly what he should attempt to make of it--that he was
conscious only in a secondary degree of the story she illustrated, and
had in regard to her acting a surprised sense that she was
extraordinarily quiet. He remembered her loudness, her violence in
Paris, at Peter Sherringham's, her wild wails, the first time, at Madame
Carre's; compared with which her present manner was eminently temperate
and modern. Nick Dormer was not critical at the theatre; he believed
what he saw and had a pleasant sense of the inevitable; therefore he
wouldn't have guessed what Gabriel Nash had to tell him--that for this
young woman, with her tragic cast and her peculiar attributes, her
present performance, full of actuality, of light fine indications and at
moments of pointed touches of comedy, was a rare _tour de force_. It
went on altogether in a register he hadn't supposed her to possess and
in which, as he said, she didn't touch her capital, doing it all with
her wonderful little savings. It conveyed to him that she was capable of
almost anything.

In one of the intervals they went round to see her; but for Nick this
purpose was partly defeated by the extravagant transports, as they
struck him, of Mrs. Rooth, whom they found sitting with her daughter and
who attacked him with a hundred questions about his dear mother and his
charming sisters. She had volumes to say about the day in Paris when
they had shown her the kindness she should never forget. She abounded
also in admiration of the portrait he had so cleverly begun, declaring
she was so eager to see it, however little he might as yet have
accomplished, that she should do herself the honour to wait upon him in
the morning when Miriam came to sit.

"I'm acting for you to-night," the girl more effectively said before he
returned to his place.

"No, that's exactly what you're not doing," Nash interposed with one of
his happy sagacities. "You've s