Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 2.djvu/99

Rh "It seems to me I'm as kind as you: you sent him off."

"That was for your mother: she was tired."

"Oh, gammon! And why, if I were cruel, should it be of course?"

"Because you must destroy and torment and consume—that's your nature. But you can't help your type, can you?"

"My type?" the girl repeated.

"It's bad, perverse, dangerous. It's essentially insolent."

"And pray what is yours, when you talk like that? Would you say such things if you didn't know the depths of my good-nature?"

"Your good-nature all comes back to that," said Sherringham. "It's an abyss of ruin—for others. You have no respect. I'm speaking of the artistic character, in the direction and in the .plenitude in which you have it. It's unscrupulous, nervous, capricious, wanton."

"I don't know about respect: one can be good," Miriam reasoned.

"It doesn't matter, so long as one is powerful," answered Sherringham. "We can't have everything, and surely we ought to understand that we must pay for things. A splendid organization for a special end, like yours, is so rare and rich and fine that we oughtn't to grudge it its conditions."

"What do you call its conditions?" Miriam demanded, turning and looking at him.

"Oh, the need to take its ease, to take up space, to make itself at home in the world, to square its elbows and knock others about. That's large and free; it's the good-nature you speak of. You must forage and ravage and leave a track