ess and
wished to take observations for it, to work herself into the character.
The girl might in fact have been a political duchess as she sat, her
head erect and her gloved hands folded, smiling with aristocratic
dimness at Nick. She shook her head with stately sadness; she might have
been trying some effect for Mary Stuart in Schiller's play. "I've
changed since that. I want you to be the grandest thing there is--the
counsellor of kings."

Peter wondered if it possibly weren't since she had met his sister in
Nick's studio that she had changed, if perhaps she hadn't seen how it
might give Julia the sense of being more effectually routed to know that
the woman who had thrown the bomb was one who also tried to keep Nick in
the straight path. This indeed would involve an assumption that Julia
might know, whereas it was perfectly possible she mightn't and more than
possible that if she should she wouldn't care. Miriam's essential
fondness for trying different ways was always there as an adequate
reason for any particular way; a truth which, however, sometimes only
half-prevented the particular way from being vexatious to a particular
observer.

"Yet after all who's more esthetic than you and who goes in more for the
beautiful?" Nick asked. "You're never so beautiful as when you pitch
into it."

"Oh, I'm an inferior creature, of an inferior sex, and I've to earn my
bread as I can. I'd give it all up in a moment, my odious trade--for an
inducement."

"And pray what do you mean by an inducement?" Nick demanded.

"My dear fellow, she means you--if you'll give her a permanent
engagement to sit for you!" Gabriel volunteered. "What singularly crude
questions you ask!"

"I like the way she talks," Mr. Dashwood derisively said, "when I gave
up the most brilliant prospects, of very much the same kind as Mr.
Dormer's, expressly to go on the stage."

"You're an inferior creature too," Miriam promptly pronounced.

"Miss Rooth's very hard to satisfy," Peter observed at this. "A man of
distinction, slightly bald, in evening dress, with orders, in the corner
of her _loge_--she has such a personage ready made to her hand and she
doesn't so much as look at him. Am _I_ not an inducement? Haven't I
offered you a permanent engagement?"

"Your orders--where are your orders?" she returned with a sweet smile,
getting up.

"I shall be a minister next year and an ambassador before you know it.
Then I shall stick on everything that ca