“It must be that, because you understand me, but I cannot quite explain,” said Mirah, rather abstractedly—still searching for some expression.
“But was it beautiful for Buddha to let the tiger eat him?” said Amy, changing her ground. “It would be a bad pattern.”
“The world would get full of fat tigers,” said Mab.
Deronda laughed, but defended the myth. “It is like a passionate word,” he said; “the exaggeration is a flash of fervor. It is an extreme image of what is happening every day—the transmutation of self.”
“I think I can say what I mean, now,” said Mirah, who had not heard the intermediate talk. “When the best thing comes into our thoughts, it is like what my mother has been to me. She has been just as really with me as all the other people about me—often more really with me.”
Deronda, inwardly wincing under this illustration, which brought other possible realities about that mother vividly before him, presently turned the conversation by saying, “But we must not get too far away from practical matters. I came, for one thing, to tell of an interview I had yesterday, which I hope Mirah will find to have been useful to her. It was with Klesmer, the great pianist.”
“Ah?” said Mrs. Meyrick, with satisfaction. “You think he will help her?”
“I hope so. He is very much occupied, but has promised to fix a time for receiving and hearing Miss Lapidoth, as we must learn to call her”—here Deronda smiled at Mirah—“If she consents to go to him.”
“I shall be very grateful,” said Mirah. “He wants to hear me sing, before he can judge whether I ought to be helped.”
Deronda was struck with her plain sense about these matters of practical concern.