Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 3.djvu/132

124 "Never in my life. I only say that that's the best thing for a woman to be who finds herself irresistibly carried into the practice of the arts; for there her capacity for them has most application and her incapacity for them least. But at the same time I strongly recommend her not to be an artist if she can possibly help it. It's a devil of a life."

"Oh, I know; men want women not to be anything."

"It's a poor little refuge they try to take from the overwhelming consciousness that you are in fact everything."

"Everything 1 That's the kind of thing you say to keep us quiet."

"Dear Biddy, you see how well we succeed!" laughed Sherringham; to which the girl responded by inquiring irrelevantly:

"Why is it so necessary for you to go to the theatre to-night, if Miss Rooth doesn't want you to?"

"My dear child, she does. But that has nothing to do with it."

"Why then did she say that she doesn't?"

"Oh, because she meant just the contrary."

"Is she so false then—is she so vulgar?"

"She speaks a special language; practically it isn't false, because it renders her thought, and those who know her understand it."

"But she doesn't use it only to those who know her, since she asked me, who have so little the honour of her acquaintance, to keep you away to-night. How am I to know that she meant by that that I'm to urge you on to go?"

Sherringham was on the point of replying: "Because you