Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 2.djvu/101

Rh "Come away with you?"

"Leave this place: give it up."

"You brought me here, you insisted it should be only you, and now you must stay," she declared, with a head-shake and a laugh. "You should know what you want, dear Mr. Sherringham."

"I do—I know now. Come away, before she comes."

"Before she comes?"

"She's success—this wonderful Voisin—she's triumph, she's full accomplishment: the hard, brilliant realization of what I want to avert for you." Miriam looked at him in silence, the angry light still in her face, and he repeated: "Give it up—give it up."

Her eyes softened after a moment; she smiled and then she said: "Yes, you're better than poor Dashwood."

"Give it up and we'll live for ourselves, in ourselves, in something that can have a sanctity."

"All the same, you do hate us," the girl went on.

"I don't want to be conceited, but I mean that I'm sufficiently fine and complicated to tempt you. I'm an expensive modern watch, with a wonderful escapement—therefore you'll smash me if you can."

"Never—never!" said the girl, getting up. "You tell me the hour too well." She quitted her companion and stood looking at Gérôme's fine portrait of the pale Rachel, invested with the antique attributes of tragedy. The rise of the curtain had drawn away most of the company. Sherringham, from his bench, watched Miriam a little, turning his eye from her to the vivid image of the dead actress and thinking that his