She raised her cup to her lips, looking at him over the rim of it--a
proceeding that gave her eyes a strange expression. "It bores you and
you think it disagreeable," she then said--"I mean a girl always talking
about herself." He protested she could never bore him and she added: "Oh
I don't want compliments--I want the hard, the precious truth. An
actress has to talk about herself. What else can she talk about, poor
vain thing?"

"She can talk sometimes about other actresses."

"That comes to the same thing. You won't be serious. I'm awfully
serious." There was something that caught his attention in the note of
this--a longing half hopeless, half argumentative to be believed in. "If
one really wants to do anything one must worry it out; of course
everything doesn't come the first day," she kept on. "I can't see
everything at once; but I can see a little more--step by step--as I go;
can't I?"

"That's the way--that's the way," he gently enough returned. "When you
see the things to do the art of doing them will come--if you hammer
away. The great point's to see them."

"Yes; and you don't think me clever enough for that."

"Why do you say so when I've asked you to come here on purpose?"

"You've asked me to come, but I've had no success."

"On the contrary; every one thought you wonderful."

"Oh but they don't know!" said Miriam Rooth. "You've not said a word to
me. I don't mind your not having praised me; that would be too banal.
But if I'm bad--and I know I'm dreadful--I wish you'd talk to me about
it."

"It's delightful to talk to you," Peter found himself saying.

"No, it isn't, but it's kind"; and she looked away from him.

Her voice had with this a quality which made him exclaim: "Every now and
then you 'say' something--!"

She turned her eyes back to him and her face had a light. "I don't want
it to come by accident." Then she added: "If there's any good to be got
from trying, from showing one's self, how can it come unless one hears
the simple truth, the truth that turns one inside out? It's all for
that--to know what one is, if one's a stick!"

"You've great courage, you've rare qualities," Sherringham risked. She
had begun to touch him, to seem different: he was glad she had not gone.

But for a little she made no answer, putting down her empty cup and
yearning over the table as for something more to eat. Suddenly she
raised her head and broke out with vehemence: "I will, I will, I will!"

"