Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 3.djvu/49

Rh expect it; she's not such a goose. They're very good friends—it will go on that way. She's an excellent sort of woman for him to know; she'll give him lots of ideas of the plastic kind. He would have been up there before this, but he has been absorbed in this delightful squabble with his constituents. That of course is pure amusement; but when once it's well launched he'll get back to business and his business will be a very different matter from Miriam's. Imagine him writing her advertisements, living on her money, adding up her profits, having rows and recriminations with her agent, carrying her shawl, spending his days in her rouge-pot. The right man for that, if she must have one, will turn up. Pour le mariage, non. Miriam isn't an idiot; she really, for a woman, quite sees things as they are."

As Sherringham had not crossed the street and left Gabriel planted, he was obliged to brave the torment of this suggestive flow. But descrying in the dusky vista of the Edgware Road a vague and vigilant hansom, he waved his stick with eagerness and with the abrupt declaration that he was tired, must drive the rest of the way. He offered Nash, as he entered the vehicle, no seat, but this coldness was not reflected in the lucidity with which that master of every subject went on to affirm that there was, of course, a danger—the danger that in given circumstances Miriam would leave the stage.

"Leave it you mean for some man?"

"For the man we're talking about."

"For Nick Dormer?" Peter asked from his place in the cab, his paleness lighted by its lamps.

"If he should make it a condition. But why should he—