listen to her, would do for her what he could. The trouble was that no
one would lift a finger for a girl unless she were known, and yet that
she never could become known till innumerable fingers had been lifted.
You couldn't go into the water unless you could swim, and you couldn't
swim until you had been in the water.

"But new performers appear; they get theatres, they get audiences, they
get notices in the newspapers," Mrs. Rooth objected. "I know of these
things only what Miriam tells me. It's no knowledge that I was born to."

"It's perfectly true. It's all done with money."

"And how do they come by money?" Mrs. Rooth candidly asked.

"When they're women people give it to them."

"Well, what people now?"

"People who believe in them."

"As you believe in Miriam?"

Peter had a pause. "No, rather differently. A poor man doesn't believe
in anything the same way that a rich man does."

"Ah don't call yourself poor!" groaned Mrs. Rooth.

"What good would it do me to be rich?"

"Why you could take a theatre. You could do it all yourself."

"And what good would that do me?"

"Ah don't you delight in her genius?" demanded Mrs. Rooth.

"I delight in her mother. You think me more disinterested than I am,"
Sherringham added with a certain soreness of irritation.

"I know why you didn't write!" Mrs. Rooth declared archly.

"You must go to London," Peter said without heeding this remark.

"Ah if we could only get there it would be a relief. I should draw a
long breath. There at least I know where I am and what people are. But
here one lives on hollow ground!"

"The sooner you get away the better," our young man went on.

"I know why you say that."

"It's just what I'm explaining."

"I couldn't have held out if I hadn't been so sure of Miriam," said Mrs.
Rooth.

"Well, you needn't hold out any longer."

"Don't _you_ trust her?" asked Sherringham's hostess.

"Trust her?"

"You don't trust yourself. That's why you were silent, why we might have
thought you were dead, why we might have perished ourselves."

"I don't think I understand you; I don't know what you're talking
about," Peter returned. "But it doesn't matter."

"Doesn't it? Let yourself go. Why should you struggle?" the old woman
agreeably inquired.

Her unexpected insistence annoyed her visitor, and he was silent again,
meeting her eyes with reserve and on the point of telling her that he
didn't like her tone. But he had his tongue un