es, that's the pity of it," said Nash. "She's a big more or less
directed force, and I quite admit that she'll do for a while a lot of
good. She'll have brightened up the world for a great many people--have
brought the ideal nearer to them and held it fast for an hour with its
feet on earth and its great wings trembling. That's always something,
for blest is he who has dropped even the smallest coin into the little
iron box that contains the precious savings of mankind. Miriam will
doubtless have dropped a big gold-piece. It will be found in the general
scramble on the day the race goes bankrupt. And then for herself she'll
have had a great go at life."

"Oh yes, she'll have got out of her hole--she won't have vegetated,"
Peter concurred. "That makes her touching to me--it adds to the many
good reasons for which one may want to help her. She's tackling a big
job, and tackling it by herself; throwing herself upon the world in good
faith and dealing with it as she can; meeting alone, in her youth, her
beauty, her generosity, all the embarrassments of notoriety and all the
difficulties of a profession of which, if one half's what's called
brilliant the other's frankly odious."

"She has great courage, but you speak of her as solitary with such a lot
of us all round her?" Nash candidly inquired.

"She's a great thing for you and me, but we're a small thing for her."

"Well, a good many small things, if they but stick together, may make up
a mass," Gabriel said. "There must always be the man, you see. He's the
indispensable element in such a life, and he'll be the last thing she'll
ever lack."

"What man are you talking about?" Peter asked with imperfect ease.

"The man of the hour, whoever he is. She'll inspire innumerable
devotions."

"Of course she will, and they'll be precisely a part of the insufferable
side of her life."

"Insufferable to whom?" Nash demanded. "Don't forget that the
insufferable side of her life will be just the side she'll thrive on.
You can't eat your cake and have it, and you can't make omelettes
without breaking eggs. You can't at once sit by the fire and parade
about the world, and you can't take all chances without having some
adventures. You can't be a great actress without the luxury of nerves.
Without a plentiful supply--or without the right ones--you'll only be
second fiddle. If you've all the tense strings you may take life for
your fiddlestick. Your nerves and your adventures, your