Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 1.djvu/206

198 Sherringham made no direct rejoinder to this, but after a moment he said: "Your mother must repay that money. I'll give it to her."

"You had better give it to him!" cried Miriam. "If once we have it—" She interrupted herself, and with another and a softer tone, one of her professional transitions, she remarked: "I suppose you have never known any one that's poor."

"I'm poor myself. That is I'm very far from rich. But why receive favours—?" And here he, in turn, checked himself, with the sense that he was indeed taking a great deal on his back if he pretended already (he had not seen the pair three times) to regulate their intercourse with the rest of the world. But Miriam instantly carried out his thought and more than his thought.

"Favours from Mr. Nash? Oh, he doesn't count!"

The way she dropped these words (they would have been admirable on the stage) made him laugh and say immediately: "What I meant just now was that you are not to tell him, after all my swagger, that I consider that you and I are really required to save our theatre."

"Oh, if we can save it, he shall know it!" Then Miriam added that she must positively get home; her mother would be in a state: she had really scarcely ever been out alone. He mightn't think it, but so it was. Her mother's ideas, those awfully proper ones, were not all talk. She did keep her! Sherringham accepted this—he had an adequate, and indeed an analytic vision of Mrs. Rooth's conservatism; but he observed at the same time that his companion made no motion to rise. He made none, either; he only said—