"I know nothing about it."
He gave a short laugh.
"Well, that's better and more honest than saying you believe what is contrary to all human experience. Look back on your life. Has its course been of your own shaping? Compare yourself of to-day with yourself of four years ago; has the change come about by your own agency? If you are wrong, are you to blame? Imagine some fanatic seizing you by the arm, and shouting to you to beware of the precipice to which you are advancing—"
He suited the action to the word, and grasped her wrist. Miriam shook him off angrily.
"What do you know of me?" she exclaimed, with suppressed scorn.
"True. Just as little as you know of me, or any one person of any other. However, I was speaking of what you know of yourself. I suppose you can look back on one or two things in your life of which your judgment doesn't approve? Do you imagine they could have happened otherwise than they did? Do you think it lay in your own power to take the course you now think the better?"
Miriam stood up impatiently, and showed no intention of replying. Again Elgar laughed, and waved his arm as if dismissing a subject of thought.
"Come up and look at the drawing-room," he said, walking to the door.
"Some other time. I'll come again in a few days."
"As you please. But you must take your chance of finding me at home, unless you give me a couple of days' notice."