Why then did she say that she doesn't?"

"Oh because she meant just the contrary."

"Is she so false then--is she so vulgar?"

"She speaks a special language; practically it isn't false, because it
renders her thought and those who know her understand it."

"But she doesn't use it only to those who know her," Biddy returned,
"since she asked me, who have so little the honour of her acquaintance,
to keep you away to-night. How am I to know that she meant by that that
I'm to urge you on to go?"

He was on the point of replying, "Because you've my word for it"; but he
shrank in fact from giving his word--he had some fine scruples--and
sought to relieve his embarrassment by a general tribute. "Dear Biddy,
you're delightfully acute: you're quite as clever as Miss Rooth." He
felt, however, that this was scarcely adequate and he continued: "The
truth is that its being important for me to go is a matter quite
independent of that young lady's wishing it or not wishing it. There
happens to be a definite intrinsic propriety in it which determines the
thing and which it would take me long to explain."

"I see. But fancy your 'explaining' to me: you make me feel so
indiscreet!" the girl cried quickly--an exclamation which touched him
because he was not aware that, quick as it had been, she had still had
time to be struck first--though she wouldn't for the world have
expressed it--with the oddity of such a duty at such a season. In fact
that oddity, during a silence of some minutes, came back to Peter
himself: the note had been forced--it sounded almost ignobly frivolous
from a man on the eve of proceeding to a high diplomatic post. The
effect of this, none the less, was not to make him break out with "Hang
it, I _will_ keep my engagement to your mother!" but to fill him with
the wish to shorten his present strain by taking Biddy the rest of the
way in a cab. He was uncomfortable, and there were hansoms about that he
looked at wistfully. While he was so occupied his companion took up the
talk by an abrupt appeal.

"Why did she say that Nick oughtn't to have resigned his seat?"

"Oh I don't know. It struck her so. It doesn't matter much."

But Biddy kept it up. "If she's an artist herself why doesn't she like
people to go in for art, especially when Nick has given his time to
painting her so beautifully? Why does she come there so often if she
disapproves of what he has done?"

"Oh Miriam's disapproval--it doesn't count; it