Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 1.djvu/201

Rh interpretation scrambles off as it can. To get the old personal impression, which used to be everything, you must go to the poor countries, and most of all to Italy."

"Oh, I've had it; it's very personal!" said Miriam, knowingly.

"You've seen the nudity of the stage, the poor painted, tattered screen behind, and in the empty space the histrionic figure, doing everything it knows how, in complete possession. The personality isn't our English personality, and it may not always carry us with it; but the direction is right, and it has the superiority that it's a human exhibition, not a mechanical one."

"I can act just like an Italian," said Miriam, eagerly.

"I would rather you acted like an Englishwoman, if an Englishwoman would only act."

"Oh. I'll show you!"

"But you're not English," said Sherringham, sociably, with his arms on the table.

"I beg your pardon; you should hear mamma about our 'race.'"

"You're a Jewess—I'm sure of that," Sherringham went on. She jumped at this, as he was destined to see, later, that she would jump at anything that would make her more interesting or striking; even at things which, grotesquely, contradicted or excluded each other. "That's always possible, if one's clever. I'm very willing, because I want to be the English Rachel."

"Then you must leave Madame Carré, as soon as you have got from her what she can give."

"Oh, you needn't fear; you sha'n't lose me," the girl replied, with gross, charming fatuity. "My name is Jewish," she went on, "but it was that of my grandmother, my father's