Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 2.djvu/76

68 This apostrophe, being briefly responded to in another voice, gave him time quickly to raise the curtain and show himself, passing into the room with a "Go on, go on!" and a gesture earnestly deprecating a stop.

Miriam, in the full swing of her part, paused but for an instant and let herself ring out again, while Peter sank into the nearest chair and she fixed him with her illumined eyes, or rather with those of the raving Constance. Madame Carré, buried in a chair, kissed her hand to him, and a young man who stood near the girl giving her the cue stared at him over the top of a little book. "Admirable—magnificent; go on," Sherringham repeated—"go on to the end of the scene—do it all!" Miriam flushed a little, but he immediately discovered that she had no personal emotion in seeing him again; the cold passion of art had perched on her banner and she listened to herself with an ear as vigilant as if she had been a Paganini drawing a fiddle-bow. This effect deepened as she went on, rising and rising to the great occasion, moving with extraordinary ease and in the largest, clearest style on the dizzy ridge of her idea. That she had an idea was visible enough and that the whole thing was very different from all that Sherringham had hitherto heard her attempt. It belonged quite to another class of effort; she seemed now like the finished statue lifted from the ground to its pedestal. It was as if the sun of her talent had risen above the hills and she knew that she was moving, that she would always move, in its guiding light. This conviction was the one artless thing that glimmered like a young joy through the tragic mask of Constance, and Sherringham's heart beat faster as he caught