ve me, it isn't wise to
turn your back on such an affection as mine and on such a confidence,"
he broke out again, speaking almost in a warning tone--there was a touch
of superior sternness in it, as of a rebuke for real folly, but it was
meant to be tender--and stopping her within a few feet of the window.
"Such things are the most precious that life has to give us," he added
all but didactically.

She had listened once more for a little; then she appeared to give up
the idea of the cab. The reader need hardly be told that at this stage
of her youthful history the right way for her lover to take her wouldn't
have been to picture himself as acting for her highest good. "I like
your calling the feeling with which I inspire you confidence," she
presently said; and the deep note of the few words had something of the
distant mutter of thunder.

"What is it, then, when I offer you everything I have, everything I am,
everything I shall ever be?"

She seemed to measure him as for the possible success of an attempt to
pass him. But she remained where she was. "I'm sorry for you, yes, but
I'm also rather ashamed."

"Ashamed of _me_?"

"A brave offer to see me through--that's what I should call confidence.
You say to-day that you hate the theatre--and do you know what has made
you do it? The fact that it has too large a place in your mind to let
you disown it and throw it over with a good conscience. It has a deep
fascination for you, and yet you're not strong enough to do so
enlightened and public a thing as take up with it in my person. You're
ashamed of yourself for that, as all your constant high claims for it
are on record; so you blaspheme against it to try and cover your retreat
and your treachery and straighten out your personal situation. But it
won't do, dear Mr. Sherringham--it won't do at all," Miriam proceeded
with a triumphant, almost judicial lucidity which made her companion
stare; "you haven't the smallest excuse of stupidity, and your
perversity is no excuse whatever. Leave her alone altogether--a poor
girl who's making her way--or else come frankly to help her, to give her
the benefit of your wisdom. Don't lock her up for life under the
pretence of doing her good. What does one most good is to see a little
honesty. You're the best judge, the best critic, the best observer, the
best _believer_, that I've ever come across: you're committed to it by
everything you've said to me for a twelvemonth, by the whol