to trample on. Miriam
took it all as a bath, a baptism, with shuddering joy and gleeful
splashes; staring, wondering, sometimes blushing and failing to follow,
but not shrinking nor wounded; laughing, when convicted, at her own
expense and feeling evidently that this at last was the high cold air of
art, an initiation, a discipline that nothing could undo. Sherringham
said he would see her home--he wanted to talk to her and she must walk
away with him. "And it's understood then she may come back," he added to
Madame Carre. "It's _my_ affair of course. You'll take an interest in
her for a month or two; she'll sit at your feet."

The old actress had an admirable shrug. "Oh I'll knock her about--she
seems stout enough!"

XI

When they had descended to the street Miriam mentioned to Peter that she
was thirsty, dying to drink something: upon which he asked her if she
should have an objection to going with him to a cafe.

"Objection? I've spent my life in cafes! They're warm in winter and you
get your lamplight for nothing," she explained. "Mamma and I have sat in
them for hours, many a time, with a _consommation_ of three sous, to
save fire and candles at home. We've lived in places we couldn't sit in,
if you want to know--where there was only really room if we were in bed.
Mamma's money's sent out from England and sometimes it usedn't to come.
Once it didn't come for months--for months and months. I don't know how
we lived. There wasn't any to come; there wasn't any to get home. That
isn't amusing when you're away in a foreign town without any friends.
Mamma used to borrow, but people wouldn't always lend. You needn't be
afraid--she won't borrow of _you_. We're rather better now--something
has been done in England; I don't understand what. It's only fivepence a
year, but it has been settled; it comes regularly; it used to come only
when we had written and begged and waited. But it made no
difference--mamma was always up to her ears in books. They served her
for food and drink. When she had nothing to eat she began a novel in
ten volumes--the old-fashioned ones; they lasted longest. She knows
every _cabinet de lecture_ in every town; the little, cheap, shabby
ones, I mean, in the back streets, where they have odd volumes and only
ask a sou and the books are so old that they smell like close rooms. She
takes them to the cafes--the little, cheap, shabby cafes too--and she
reads there all the evening. That's very we