Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 1.djvu/129

Rh a home you must make one. In our profession it's the first requisite."

"But where? That's what I ask!" said Mrs. Rooth.

"Why not here?" Sherringham inquired.

"Oh, here!" And the good lady shook her head, with a world of suggestions.

"Come and live in London, and then I shall be able to paint your daughter," Nick Dormer interposed.

"Is that all that it will take, my dear fellow?" asked Gabriel Nash.

"Ah, London is full of memories," Mrs. Rooth went on. "My father had a great house there—we always came up. But all that's over."

"Study here, and go to London to appear," said Peter Sherringham, feeling frivolous even as he spoke.

"To appear in French?"

"No, in the language of Shakespeare."

"But we can't study that here."

"Monsieur Sherringham means that he will give you lessons," Madame Carré explained. "Let me not fail to say it—he's an excellent critic."

"How do you know that—you who are perfect?" asked Sherringham: an inquiry to which the answer was forestalled by the girl's rousing herself to make it public that she could recite the "Nights" of Alfred de Musset.

"Diable!" said the actress, "that's more than I can! But by all means give us a specimen."

The girl again placed herself in position and rolled out a fragment of one of the splendid conversations of Musset's