Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 3.djvu/233

Rh of whom I speak with the greatest respect, are capable of hatching together the most conscientious, delightful plan for you. Your differences with the beautiful lady will be patched up, and you'll each come round a little and meet the other half-way. Mrs. Dallow will swallow your profession if you'll swallow hers. She'll put up with the palette if you'll put up with the country-house. It will be a very unusual one in which you won't find a good north room where you can paint. You'll go about with her and do all her friends, all the bishops and ambassadors, and you'll eat your cake and have it, and every one, beginning with your wife, will forget there is anything queer about you, and everything will be for the best in the best of worlds; so that, together—you and she—you'll become a great social institution, and every one will think she has a delightful husband; to say nothing of course of your having a delightful wife. Ah, my dear fellow, you turn pale, and with reason!" Nash went on: "that's to pay you for having tried to make me let you have it. You have it, then, there! I may be a bore"—the emphasis of this, though a mere shade, testified to the first personal resentment Nick had ever heard his visitor express—"I may be a bore, but once in a while I strike a light, I make things out. Then I venture to repeat, 'Take care, take care.' If, as I say, I respect those ladies infinitely, it is because they will be acting according to the highest wisdom of their sex. That's the sort of thing women invent when they're exceptionally good and clever. When they're not, they don't do so well; but it's not for want of trying. There's only one thing in the world that's better than their charm: it's their conscience. That indeed