Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 3.djvu/182

174 "A brave offer to see me through—that's what I should call confidence. You say to-day that you hate the theatre; and do you know what has made you do it? The fact that it has too large a place in your mind to let you repudiate it and throw it over with a good conscience. It has a deep fascination for you, and yet you're not strong enough to make the concession of taking up with it publicly, in my person. You're ashamed of yourself for that, as all your constant high claims for it are on record; so you blaspheme against it, to try and cover your retreat and your treachery and straighten out your personal situation. But it won't do, my dear fellow—it won't do at all," Miriam proceeded, with a triumphant, almost judicial lucidity which made her companion stare; "you haven't the smallest excuse of stupidity, and your perversity is no excuse at all. Leave her alone altogether—a poor girl who's making her way—or else come frankly to help her, to give her the benefit of your wisdom. Don't lock her up for life under the pretence of doing her good. What does one most good is to see a little honesty. You're the best judge, the best critic, the best observer, the best believer, that I've ever come across; you're committed to it by everything you've said to me for a twelvemonth, by the whole turn of your mind, by the way you've followed up this business of ours. If an art is noble and beneficent, one shouldn't be afraid to offer it one's arm. Your cousin isn't: he can make sacrifices."

"My cousin?" shouted Peter. "Why, wasn't it only the other day that you were throwing his sacrifices in his teeth?"