Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 2.djvu/242

234 long that might be. This was rather heroic on Peter's part, for his assumed detachment from the girl's personal life still left him a margin for some forms of uneasiness. It would have made, in his spirit, a great difference for the worse that the woman he loved, and for whom he wished no baser lover than himself, should have embraced the prospect of consorting only with the cheaper kind. It was all very well, but Fanny Rover was simply a cabotine, and that sort of association was an odd training for a young woman who was to have been good enough (he couldn't forget that—he kept remembering it as if it might still have a future use) to be his wife. Certainly he ought to have thought of such things before he permitted himself to become so interested in a theatrical nature. His heroism did him service however for the hour: it helped him by the end of the week to feel tremendously broken in to Miriam's little circle. What helped him most indeed was to reflect that she would get tired of a good many of its members herself in time; for it was not that they were shocking (very few of them shone with that intense light), but that they could be trusted in the long run to bore you.

There was a lovely Sunday in particular that he spent almost wholly in Balaklava Place—he arrived so early—when, in the afternoon, all sorts of odd people dropped in. Miriam held a reception in the little garden and insisted on almost all the company's staying to supper. Her mother shed tears to Sherringham, in the desecrated house, because they had accepted, Miriam and she, an invitation—and in Cromwell Road too—for the evening. Miriam decreed that they shouldn't go: they would have much better fun with their