Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 3.djvu/185

Rh the money earned by an exhibition of the person of his still more accomplished and still more determined wife?"

"Why not, if they work together—if there's something of his spirit and his support in everything she does?" Miriam demanded. "Je vous attendais, with the famous 'person;' of course that's the great stick they beat us with. Yes, we show it for money, those of us who have anything to show, and some no doubt who haven't, which is the real scandal. What will you have? It's only the envelope of the idea, it's only our machinery, which ought to be conceded to us; and in proportion as the idea takes hold of us do we become unconscious of the clumsy body. Poor old 'person'—if you knew what we think of it! If you don't forget it, that's your own affair: it shows that you're dense before the idea."

"That I'm dense?"

"I mean the public is—the public who pays us. After all, they expect us to look at them too, who are not half so well worth it. If you should see some of the creatures who have the face to plant themselves there in the stalls, before one, for three mortal hours! I dare say it would be simpler to have no bodies, but we're all in the same box, and it would be a great injustice to the idea, and we're all showing ourselves all the while; only some of us are not worth paying."

"You're extraordinarily droll, but somehow I can't laugh at you," said Peter, his handsome face lengthened to a point that sufficiently attested the fact. "Do you remember the second time I ever saw you—the day you recited at my place?" he abruptly inquired, a good deal as if he were