Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 2.djvu/119

Rh "I did wish they'd go. Haven't I told you a hundred times what I think of your salon?"

"How then do you want me to live?" Mrs. Dallow asked. "Am I not to have a creature in the house?"

"As many creatures as you like. Your freedom is complete, and as far as I am concerned always will be. Only when you challenge me and overhaul me—not justly I think—I must confess the simple truth, that there are many of your friends I don't delight in."

"Oh, your idea of pleasant people!" Julia exclaimed. "I should like once for all to know what it really is."

"I can tell you what it really isn't: it isn't Mr. Macgeorge. He's a being almost grotesquely limited."

"He'll be where you'll never be—unless you change."

"To be where Mr. Macgeorge is not would be very much my desire. Therefore why should I change?" Nick demanded. "However, I hadn't the least intention of being rude to him, and I don't think I was," he went on. "To the best of my ability I assume a virtue if I have it not; but apparently I'm not enough of a comedian."

"If you have it not? It's when you say things like that that you're so dreadfully tiresome. As if there were anything that you haven't or mightn't have!"

Nick turned away from his hostess; he took a few impatient steps in the room, looking at the carpet, with his hands in his pockets again. Then he came back to the fire with the observation: "It's rather hard to be found so wanting when one has tried to play one's part so beautifully." He paused, with his eyes on Mrs. Dallow's; then continued, with a vibration in