Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 3.djvu/46

38 thrive on. You can't eat your cake and have it, and you can't make omelettes without breaking eggs. You can't at once sit by the fire and fly about the world, and you can't go round and round the globe without having adventures. You can't be a great actress without quivering nerves. If you haven't them you'll only be a small one. If you have them, your friends will be pretty sure to hear of them. Your nerves and your adventures, your eggs and your cake, are part of the cost of the most expensive of professions. If you do your business at all you should do it handsomely, so that the costs may run up tremendously. You play with human passions, with exaltations and ecstasies and terrors, and if you trade on the fury of the elements you must know how to ride the storm."

"Those are the fine old commonplaces about the artistic temperament, but I usually find the artist a very meek, decent little person," said Sherringham.

"You never find the artist—you only find his work, and that's all you need find. When the artist's a woman and the woman's an actress, meekness and decency will doubtless be there in the right proportions," Nash went on. "Miriam will represent them for you, if you give her her starting-point, with the utmost charm."

"Of course she'll have devotions—that's all right," said Sherringham, impatiently.

"And—don't you see?—they'll mitigate her solitude, they'll even enliven it," Nash remarked.

"She'll probably box a good many ears: that'll be lively," Peter rejoined, with some grimness.

"Oh, magnificent! it will be a merry life. Yet with its