Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 1.djvu/198

190 people, their faces, their types, their movements. There's a great deal goes on in cafés: people come to them to talk things over, their private affairs, their complications; they have important meetings. Oh, I've observed scenes, between men and women—very quiet, terribly quiet, but tragic! Once I saw a woman do something that I'm going to do some day, when I'm great—if I can get the situation. I'll tell you what it is some day; I'll do it for you. Oh, it is the book of life!"

So Miriam discoursed, familiarly, disconnectedly, as the pair went their way down the Rue de Constantinople; and she continued to abound in anecdote and remark after they were seated face to face at a little marble table in an establishment which Sherringham selected carefully and he had caused her, at her request, to be accommodated with sirop 'dorgeat. "I know what it will come to: Madame Carré will want to keep me." This was one of the announcements she presently made.

"To keep you?"

"For the French stage. She won't want to let you have me." She said things of that kind, astounding in self-complacency, the assumption of quick success. She was in earnest, evidently prepared to work, but her imagination flew over preliminaries and probations, took no account of the steps in the process, especially the first tiresome ones, the test of patience. Sherringham had done nothing for her as yet, given no substantial pledge of interest; yet she was already talking as if his protection were assured and jealous. Certainly, however, she seemed to belong to him very much indeed, as she sat facing him in the Paris café, in her youth,, her beauty and her talkative confidence. This degree of possession was highly