Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 2.djvu/232

224 would have learned from twenty. "That's what it is to be a genius," Sherringham remarked. "Genius is only the art of getting your experience fast, of stealing it, as it were; and in this sense Miss Rooth's a regular brigand." Dashwood assented good-humouredly; then he added, "Oh, she'll do!" It was exactly in these simple words, in speaking to her, that Sherringham had phrased the same truth; yet he didn't enjoy hearing them on his neighbour's lips: they had a profane, patronizing sound, suggestive of displeasing equalities.

The two men sat in silence for some minutes, watching a fat robin hop about on the little seedy lawn; at the end of which they heard a vehicle stop on the other side of the garden wall and the voices of people descending from it. "Here they come, the dear creatures," said Basil Dashwood, without moving; and from where they sat Sherringham saw the small door in the wall pushed open. The dear creatures were three in number, for a gentleman had added himself to Mrs. Rooth and her daughter. As soon as Miriam's eyes fell upon her Parisian friend she stopped short, in a large, droll theatrical attitude, and, seizing her mother's arm, exclaimed passionately: "Look where he sits, the author of all my woes—cold, cynical, cruel!" She was evidently in the highest spirits; of which Mrs. Rooth partook as she cried indulgently, giving her a slap: "Oh, get along, you gipsy!"

"She's always up to something," Basil Dashwood commented, as Miriam, radiant and with a conscious stage tread, glided towards Sherringham as if she were coming to the footlights. He rose slowly from his seat, looking at her and