Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 3.djvu/177

Rh devotion with another? If I'm so fine I'm worth looking after a bit, and the place where I'm finest is the place to look after me!"

"You were never finer than at this minute, in the deepest domesticity of private life," Sherringham returned. "I have no conception whatever of what the actor can do, and no theory whatever about the importance of the theatre. Any infatuation of that sort has completely quitted me, and for all I care the theatre may go to the dogs."

"You're dishonest, you're ungrateful, you're false!" Miriam flashed. "It was the theatre that brought you here; if it hadn't been for the theatre I never would have looked at you. It was in the name of the theatre you first made love to me; it is to the theatre that you owe every advantage that, so far as I'm concerned, you possess."

"I seem to possess a great many!" groaned Sherringham.

"You might certainly make more of those you have! You make me angry, but I want to be fair," said the glowing girl, "and I can't be unless you will. You are not fair, nor candid, nor honourable, when you swallow your words and abjure your faith, when you throw over old friends and old memories for a selfish purpose."

"'Selfish purpose' is in your own convenient idiom, bientôt dit," Sherringham answered. "I suppose you consider that if I truly esteemed you I should be ashamed to deprive the world of the light of your genius. Perhaps my esteem isn't of the right quality: there are different kinds, aren't there? At any rate I've explained that I propose to deprive the world of nothing at all. You shall be celebrated, allez!"