e intensity of truth to appearances. Mrs.
Rooth abounded in impressive evocations, and yet he saw no link between
her facile genius and that of which Miriam gave symptoms. The poor lady
never could have been accused of successful deceit, whereas the triumph
of fraud was exactly what her clever child achieved. She made even the
true seem fictive, while Miriam's effort was to make the fictive true.
Sherringham thought it an odd unpromising stock (that of the
Neville-Nugents) for a dramatic talent to have sprung from, till he
reflected that the evolution was after all natural: the figurative
impulse in the mother had become conscious, and therefore higher,
through finding an aim, which was beauty, in the daughter. Likely enough
the Hebraic Mr. Rooth, with his love of old pots and Christian
altar-cloths, had supplied in the girl's composition the esthetic
element, the sense of colour and form. In their visits to the theatre
there was nothing Mrs. Rooth more insisted on than the unprofitableness
of deceit, as shown by the most distinguished authors--the folly and
degradation, the corrosive effect on the spirit, of tortuous ways. Their
companion soon gave up the futile task of piecing together her
incongruous references to her early life and her family in England. He
renounced even the doctrine that there was a residuum of truth in her
claim of great relationships, since, existent or not, he cared equally
little for her ramifications. The principle of this indifference was at
bottom a certain desire to disconnect and isolate Miriam; for it was
disagreeable not to be independent in dealing with her, and he could be
fully so only if she herself were.

The early weeks of that summer--they went on indeed into August--were
destined to establish themselves in his memory as a season of pleasant
things. The ambassador went away and Peter had to wait for his own
holiday, which he did during the hot days contentedly enough--waited in
spacious halls and a vast, dim, bird-haunted garden. The official world
and most other worlds withdrew from Paris, and the Place de la Concorde,
a larger, whiter desert than ever, became by a reversal of custom
explorable with safety. The Champs Elysees were dusty and rural, with
little creaking booths and exhibitions that made a noise like
grasshoppers; the Arc de Triomphe threw its cool, thick shadow for a
mile; the Palais de l'Industrie glittered in the light of the long days;
the cabmen, in their red w