as well as the passionate
judgement of it under sharp stress; and Nick's vision and judgement, all
on the esthetic ground, have beautifully coincided, to Miriam's
imagination, with a now fully marked, an inspired and impenitent, choice
of her own: so that, other considerations powerfully aiding indeed, she
is ready to see their interest all splendidly as one. She is in the
uplifted state to which sacrifices and submissions loom large, but loom
so just because they must write sympathy, write passion, large. Her
measure of what she would be capable of for him--capable, that is, of
_not_ asking of him--will depend on what he shall ask of _her_, but she
has no fear of not being able to satisfy him, even to the point of
"chucking" for him, if need be, that artistic identity of her own which
she has begun to build up. It will all be to the glory, therefore, of
their common infatuation with "art": she will doubtless be no less
willing to serve his than she was eager to serve her own, purged now of
the too great shrillness.

This puts her quite on a different level from that of the vivid monsters
of M. France, whose artistic identity is the last thing _they_ wish to
chuck--their only dismissal is of all material and social over-draping.
Nick Dormer in point of fact asks of Miriam nothing but that she shall
remain "awfully interesting to paint"; but that is _his_ relation,
which, as I say, is quite a matter by itself. He at any rate, luckily
for both of them it may be, doesn't put her to the test: he is so busy
with his own case, busy with testing himself and feeling his reality.
He has seen himself as giving up precious things for an object, and that
object has somehow not been the young woman in question, nor anything
very nearly like her. She, on the other hand, has asked everything of
Peter Sherringham, who has asked everything of _her_; and it is in so
doing that she has really most testified for art and invited him to
testify. With his professed interest in the theatre--one of those deep
subjections that, in men of "taste," the Comedie Francaise used in old
days to conspire for and some such odd and affecting examples of which
were to be noted--he yet offers her his hand and an introduction to the
very best society if she will leave the stage. The power--and her having
the sense of the power--to "shine" in the world is his highest measure
of her, the test applied by him to her beautiful human value; just as
the manner in w