to theatres," Miriam replied distantly.

"That is losing much pleasure."

"The word has very different meanings."

She was roused. Mallard observed with a perverse satisfaction the scorn
implied in this rejoinder. He noted that her features had more decided
beauty than when placid.

"I imagine," he resumed, smiling at her, "that the life of an artist
must seem to you frivolous, if not something worse. I mean an artist in
the sense of a painter."

"I cannot think it the highest kind of life," Miriam replied, also
smiling, but ominously.

"As Miss Doran does," added Mallard, his eyes happening to catch
Cecily's face as it looked backwards, and his tongue speaking
recklessly.

"There are very few subjects on which Miss Doran and I think alike."

He durst not pursue this; in his state of mind, the danger of
committing some flagrant absurdity was too great. The subject attracted
him like an evil temptation, for he desired to have Miriam speak of
Cecily. But he mastered himself.

"The artist's life may be the highest of which a particular man is
capable. For instance, I think it is so in my own case."

Miriam seemed about to keep silence again, but ultimately she spoke.
The voice suggested that upon her too there was a constraint of some
kind.

"On what grounds do you believe that?"

His eyes sought her face rapidly. Was she ironical at his expense? That
would be new light upon her mind, for hitherto she had seemed to him
painfully literal. Irony meant intellect; mere scorn or pride might
signify anything but that. And he was hoping to find reserves of power
in her, such as would rescue her from the imputation of commonplaceness
in her beliefs. Testing her with his eye, he answered meaningly:

"Not, I admit, on the ground of recognized success."

Miriam made a nervous movement, and her brows contracted. Without
looking at him, she said, in a voice which seemed rather to resent his
interpretation than to be earnest in deprecating it:

"You know, Mr. Mallard, that I meant nothing of the kind."

"Yet I could have understood you, if you had. Naturally you must wonder
a little at a man's passing his life as I do. You interpret life
absolutely; it is your belief that it can have only one meaning, the
same for all, involving certain duties of which there can be no
question, and admitting certain relaxations which have endured the
moral test. A man may not fritter away the years that are granted him;
and that is