Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 2.djvu/140

132 with one of his long legs folded up; and his visitor stopped in front of him, after moving about the room vaguely and softly, almost on tiptoe, not to interrupt him. "You speak with the eloquence that rises to a man's lips on a very particular occasion; when he has practically, whatever his theory may be, renounced the right and dropped hideously into the wrong. Then his regret for the right, a certain exquisite appreciation of it, takes on an accent which I know well how to recognize."

Nick looked up at him a moment. "You've hit it, if you mean by that that I haven't resigned my seat and that I don't intend to."

"I thought you took it only to give it up. Don't you remember our talk in Paris?"

"I like to be a part of the spectacle that amuses you, but I could scarcely have taken so much trouble as that for it."

"But isn't it an absurd comedy, the life you lead?"

"Comedy or tragedy—I don't know which; whatever it is I appear to be capable of it to please two or three people."

'Then you can take trouble," said Nash.

"Yes, for the woman I'm to marry."

"Ah, you're to marry?"

"That's what has come on since we met in Paris, and it makes just the difference."

"Ah, my poor friend," smiled Gabriel, standing there, "no wonder you have an eloquence, an accent!"

"It's a pity I have them in the wrong place. I'm expected to have them in the House of Commons."