se that if she was sincere it was sincerity of execution, if she
was genuine it was the genuineness of doing it well. She did it so well
now that this very fact was charming and touching. In claiming from him
at the theatre this hour of the afternoon she had wanted honestly (the
more as she had not seen him at home for several days) to go over with
him once again, on the eve of the great night--it would be for her
second creation the critics would lie so in wait; the first success
might have been a fluke--some of her recurrent doubts: knowing from
experience of what good counsel he often was, how he could give a
worrying question its "settler" at the last. Then she had heard from
Dashwood of the change in his situation, and that had really from one
moment to the other made her think sympathetically of his
preoccupations--led her open-handedly to drop her own. She was sorry to
lose him and eager to let him know how good a friend she was conscious
he had been to her. But the expression of this was already, at the end
of a minute, a strange bedevilment: she began to listen to herself, to
speak dramatically, to represent. She uttered the things she felt as if
they were snatches of old play-books, and really felt them the more
because they sounded so well. This, however, didn't prevent their really
being as good feelings as those of anybody else, and at the moment her
friend, to still a rising emotion--which he knew he shouldn't
still--articulated the challenge I have just recorded, she had for his
sensibility, at any rate, the truth of gentleness and generosity.

"There's something the matter with you, my dear--you're jealous," Miriam
said. "You're jealous of poor Mr. Dormer. That's an example of the way
you tangle everything up. Lord, he won't hurt you, nor me either!"

"He can't hurt me, certainly," Peter returned, "and neither can you; for
I've a nice little heart of stone and a smart new breastplate of iron.
The interest I take in you is something quite extraordinary; but the
most extraordinary thing in it is that it's perfectly prepared to
tolerate the interest of others."

"The interest of others needn't trouble it much!" Miriam declared. "If
Mr. Dormer has broken off his marriage to such an awfully fine
woman--for she's that, your swell of a sister--it isn't for a ranting
wretch like me. He's kind to me because that's his nature and he notices
me because that's his business; but he's away up in the clouds--a
thousa