Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 3.djvu/254

246 said Basil Dashwood. "We'll arrange if it's humanly possible."

"We'll arrange it even if it's inhumanly impossible—that's just the point," Miriam declared, to the girl. "Don't talk about trouble—what's he meant for but to take it? Cela s'annonce bien, you see," she continued, to Nick: "doesn't it look as if we should pull beautifully together?" And as he replied that he heartily congratulated her—he was immensely interested in what he had been told—she exclaimed, after resting her eyes on him a moment: "What will you have? It seemed simpler! It was clear there had to be some one." She explained further to Nick what had led her to come in at that moment, while Dashwood approached Biddy with civil assurances that they would see, they would leave no stone unturned, though he would not have taken it upon himself to promise.

Miriam reminded Nick of the blessing he had been to her nearly a year before, on her other first night, when she was fidgety and impatient: how he had let her come and sit there for hours—helped her to possess her soul till the evening and keep out of harm's way. The case was the same at present, with the aggravation indeed that he would understand—Dashwood's nerves as well as her own: they were a great deal worse than hers. Everything was ready for Juliet; they had been rehearsing for five months (it had kept her from going mad, with the eternity of the other piece), and he had occurred to her again in the last intolerable hours as the friend in need, the salutary stop-gap, no matter how much she bothered him. She shouldn't be turned out? Biddy