Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 2.djvu/149

Rh not a guarantee to offer you; and I wonder what I've done to deserve such a gift of the gods."

"Doesn't he speak well?" Nash demanded, smiling, of Miriam.

She took no notice of him, but she repeated to Nick that she hadn't forgotten his friendly attitude in Paris; and when he answered that he surely had done very little she broke out, first resting her eyes on him a moment with a deep, reasonable smile and then springing up quickly: "Ah, well, if I must justify myself, I liked you!"

"Fancy my appearing to challenge you!" laughed Nick. "To see you again is to want tremendously to try something; but you must have an infinite patience, because I'm an awful duffer."

Miriam looked round the walls. "I see what you have done—bien des choses."

"She understands—she understands," Gabriel dropped. And he added to Miriam: "Imagine, when he might do something, his choosing a life of shams! At bottom he's like you—a wonderful artistic nature."

"I'll have patience," said the girl, smiling at Nick.

"Then, my children, I leave you—the peace of the Lord be with you." With these words Nash took his departure.

The others chose a position for Miriam's sitting, after she had placed herself in many different attitudes and different lights; but an hour had elapsed before Nick got to work—began, on a large canvas, to knock her in, as he called it. He was hindered a little even by a certain nervousness, the emotion of finding himself, out of a clear sky, confronted with