eggs and your
cake, are part of the cost of the most expensive of professions. You
play with human passions, with exaltations and ecstasies and terrors,
and if you trade on the fury of the elements you must know how to ride
the storm."

Well, Peter thought it over. "Those are the fine old commonplaces about
the artistic temperament, but I usually find the artist a very meek,
decent, little person."

"You _never_ find the artist--you only find his work, and that's all you
need find. When the artist's a woman, and the woman's an actress,
meekness and decency will doubtless be there in the right proportions,"
Nash went on. "Miriam will represent them for you, if you give her her
cue, with the utmost charm."

"Of course she'll inspire devotions--_that's_ all right," said Peter
with a wild cheerfulness.

"And of course they'll inspire responses, and with that
consequence--don't you see?--they'll mitigate her solitude, they'll even
enliven it," Nash set forth.

"She'll probably box a good many ears: that'll be lively!" Peter
returned with some grimness.

"Oh magnificent!--it will be a merry life. Yet with its tragic passages,
its distracted or its pathetic hours," Gabriel insisted. "In short, a
little of everything."

They walked on without further speech till at last Peter resumed: "The
best thing for a woman in her situation is to marry some decent
care-taking man."

"Oh I daresay she'll do that too!" Nash laughed; a remark as a result of
which his companion lapsed afresh into silence. Gabriel left him a
little to enjoy this; after which he added: "There's somebody she'd
marry to-morrow."

Peter wondered. "Do you mean her friend Dashwood?"

"No, no, I mean Nick Dormer."

"She'd marry _him_?" Peter gasped.

"I mean her head's full of him. But she'll hardly get the chance."

Peter watched himself. "Does she like him as much as that?"

"I don't quite know how much you mean, but enough for all practical
ends."

"Marrying a fashionable actress is hardly a practical end."

"Certainly not, but I'm not speaking from his point of view." Nash was
perfectly lucid. "Moreover, I thought you just now said it would be such
a good thing for her."

"To marry Nick Dormer?"

"You said a good decent man, and he's one of the very decentest."

"I wasn't thinking of the individual, but of the protection. It would
fence her about, settle certain questions, or appear to; it would make
things safe and comfortable for her