aughed the Frenchwoman.

"I shouldn't like to see her represent a very bad woman--a _really_ bad
one," Mrs. Rooth serenely pursued.

"Ah in England then, and in your theatre, every one's immaculately good?
Your plays must be even more ingenious than I supposed!"

"We haven't any plays," said Gabriel Nash.

"People will write them for Miss Rooth--it will be a new era,"
Sherringham threw in with wanton, or at least with combative, optimism.

"Will _you_, sir--will you do something? A sketch of one of our grand
English ideals?" the old lady asked engagingly.

"Oh I know what you do with our pieces--to show your superior virtue!"
Madame Carre cried before he had time to reply that he wrote nothing
but diplomatic memoranda. "Bad women? _Je n'ai joue que ca, madame_.
'Really' bad? I tried to make them real!"

"I can say 'L'Aventuriere,'" Miriam interrupted in a cold voice which
seemed to hint at a want of participation in the maternal solicitudes.

"Allow us the pleasure of hearing you then. Madame Carre will give you
the _replique_," said Peter Sherringham.

"Certainly, my child; I can say it without the book," Madame Carre
responded. "Put yourself there--move that chair a little away." She
patted her young visitor, encouraging her to rise, settling with her the
scene they should take, while the three men sprang up to arrange a place
for the performance. Miriam left her seat and looked vaguely about her;
then having taken off her hat and given it to her mother she stood on
the designated spot with her eyes to the ground. Abruptly, however,
instead of beginning the scene, Madame Carre turned to the elder lady
with an air which showed that a rejoinder to this visitor's remarks of a
moment before had been gathering force in her breast.

"You mix things up, _chere madame_, and I have it on my heart to tell
you so. I believe it's rather the case with you other English, and I've
never been able to learn that either your morality or your talent is the
gainer by it. To be too respectable to go where things are done best is
in my opinion to be very vicious indeed; and to do them badly in order
to preserve your virtue is to fall into a grossness more shocking than
any other. To do them well is virtue enough, and not to make a mess of
it the only respectability. That's hard enough to merit Paradise.
Everything else is base humbug! _Voila, chere madame_, the answer I have
for your scruples!"

"It's admirable--admirable; and