Page:The Tragic Muse (London & New York, Macmillan & Co., 1890), Volume 3.djvu/99

Rh only long enough just to say this, once for all, as I shall never speak of it again. I'm going away to save myself," Sherringham went on deliberately, standing before her and soliciting her eyes with his own. "I ought to go, no doubt, in silence, in decorum, in virtuous submission to hard necessity—without asking for credit or sympathy, without provoking any sort of scene or calling attention to my fortitude. But I can't—upon my soul I can't. I can go, I can see it through, but I can't hold my tongue. I want you to know all about it, so that over there, when I'm bored to death, I shall at least have the exasperatingly vain consolation of feeling that you do know—and that it does neither you nor me any good!"

He paused a moment, upon which Miriam asked: "That I do know what?"

"That I have a consuming passion for you and that it's impossible."

"Ah, impossible, my friend!" she sighed, but with a quickness in her assent.

"Very good; it interferes, the gratification of it would interfere fatally, with the ambition of each of us. Our ambitions are odious, but we are tied fast to them."

"Ah, why ain't we simple?" Miriam quavered. "Why ain't we of the people—comme tout le monde—just a man and a girl liking each other?"

Sherringhain hesitated a moment; she was so tenderly mocking, so sweetly ambiguous, as she said this. "Because we are precious asses! However, I'm simple enough, after all, to care for you as I have never cared for any human creature. You have, as it happens, a personal charm for me that no one