Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 2.djvu/64

56 The trouble was that no one would lift a finger for a girl unless she were known, and yet that she never could become known until innumerable fingers were lifted. You couldn't go into the water unless you could swim, and you couldn't swim until you had been in the water.

"But new performers appear; they get theatres, they get audiences, they get notices in the newspapers," Mrs. Rooth objected. "I know of these things only what Miriam tells me. It's no knowledge that I was born to."

"It's perfectly true; it's all done with money."

"And how do they come by money?" Mrs. Rooth asked, candidly.

"When they're women people give it to them."

"Well, what people, now?"

"People who believe in them."

"As you believe in Miriam?"

Sherringham was silent a moment. "No, rather differently. A poor man doesn't believe anything in the same way that a rich man does."

"Ah, don't call yourself poor!" groaned Mrs. Rooth.

"What good would it do me to be rich?"

"Why, you could take a theatre; you could do it all yourself."

"And what good would that do me?"

"Why, don't you delight in her genius?" demanded Mrs. Rooth.

"I delight in her mother. You think me more disinterested than I am," Sherringham added, with a certain soreness of irritation.