ll for her, but it doesn't
feed me. I don't like a diet of dirty old novels. I sit there beside her
with nothing to do, not even a stocking to mend; she doesn't think that
_comme il faut_. I don't know what the people take me for. However,
we've never been spoken to: any one can see mamma's a great lady. As for
me I daresay I might be anything dreadful. If you're going to be an
actress you must get used to being looked at. There were people in
England who used to ask us to stay; some of them were our cousins--or
mamma says they were. I've never been very clear about our cousins and I
don't think they were at all clear about us. Some of them are dead; the
others don't ask us any more. You should hear mamma on the subject of
our visits in England. It's very convenient when your cousins are
dead--that explains everything. Mamma has delightful phrases: 'My family
is almost extinct.' Then your family may have been anything you like.
Ours of course was magnificent. We did stay in a place once where there
was a deer-park, and also private theatricals. I played in them; I was
only fifteen years old, but I was very big and I thought I was in
heaven. I'll go anywhere you like; you needn't be afraid; we've been in
places! I've learned a great deal that way--sitting beside mamma and
watching people, their faces, their types, their movements. There's a
great deal goes on in cafes: people come to them to talk things over,
their private affairs, their complications; they have important
meetings. Oh I've observed scenes between men and women--very quiet,
terribly quiet, but awful, pathetic, tragic! Once I saw a woman do
something that I'm going to do some day when I'm great--if I can get the
situation. I'll tell you what it is sometime--I'll do it for you. Oh it
is the book of life!"

So Miriam discoursed, familiarly, disconnectedly, as the pair went their
way down the Rue de Constantinople; and she continued to abound in
anecdote and remark after they were seated face to face at a little
marble table in an establishment Peter had selected carefully and where
he had caused her, at her request, to be accommodated with _sirop
d'orgeat_. "I know what it will come to: Madame Carre will want to keep
me." This was one of the felicities she presently threw off.

"To keep you?"

"For the French stage. She won't want to let you have me." She said
things of that kind, astounding in self-complacency, the assumption of
quick success. She was in