Nash brought her, the great modern personage, as he had described her, the very next day, and it took his friend no long time to test his assurance that Miriam Rooth was now splendid. She had made an impression on him ten months before, but it had haunted him only a day, soon overlaid as it had been with other images. Yet after Nash had talked of her a while he recalled her better; some of her attitudes, some of her looks and tones began to hover before him. He was charmed in advance with the notion of painting her. When she stood there in fact, however, it seemed to him he had remembered her wrong; the brave, free, rather grand creature who instantly filled his studio with such an unexampled presence had so shaken off her clumsiness, the rudeness and crudeness that had made him pity her, a whole provincial and "second-rate" side. Miss Rooth was light and bright and direct to-day—direct without being stiff and bright without being garish. To Nick's perhaps inadequately sophisticated mind the model, the actress were figures of a vulgar setting; but it would have been impossible to show that taint less than this extremely natural yet extremely distinguished aspirant to distinction. She was more natural even than Gabriel Nash—"nature" was still Nick's formula for his amusing old friend—and beside her he appeared almost commonplace.
Nash recognised her superiority with a frankness honourable to both of them—testifying in this manner to his sense that they were all three serious beings, worthy to deal with fine realities. She attracted crowds to her theatre, but to his appreciation of such a fact as that, important doubtless in its way, there were the limits he had already expressed. What he now felt bound in all integrity to register was his perception that she had, in general and quite apart from the question of the box-office, a remarkable, a very remarkable, artistic nature. He allowed that she had surprised him here; knowing of her in other days mainly that she was hungry to adopt an overrated profession he had not imputed to her the normal measure of intelligence. Now he saw—he had had some talks with her—that she was capable almost of a violent play of mind; so much so that he was sorry for the embarrassment it would be to her. Nick could imagine the discomfort of having anything in the nature of a mind to arrange for in such conditions. "She's a woman of the best intentions, really of the best," Nash explained kindly and lucidly, almost paternally, "and the quite rare head you can see for yourself."
Miriam, smiling as she sat on an old Venetian chair, held aloft, with the noblest effect, that quarter of her person to which this patronage was extended, remarking to her host that, strange as it might appear, she had got quite to like poor Mr. Nash: she could make him go about with her—it was a relief to her mother.
"When I take him she has perfect peace," the girl said; "then she can stay at home and see the interviewers. She delights in that and I hate it, so our friend here is a great comfort. Of course a femme de théâtre is supposed to be able to go out alone, but there's a kind of 'smartness,' an added chic, in having some one. People think he's my 'companion '; I'm sure they fancy I pay him. I'd pay him, if he'd take it—and perhaps he will yet!—rather than give him up, for it doesn't matter that he's not a lady. He is one in tact and sympathy, as you see. And base as he thinks the sort of thing I do he can't keep away from the theatre. When you're celebrated people will look at you who could never before find out for themselves why they should."
"When you're celebrated you grow handsomer; at least that's what has happened to you, though you were pretty too of old," Gabriel placidly argued. "I go to the theatre to look at your head; it gives me the greatest pleasure. I take up anything of that sort as soon as I find it. One never knows how long it may last."
"Are you attributing that uncertainty to my appearance?" Miriam beautifully asked.
"Dear no, to my own pleasure, the first precious bloom of it," Nash went on. "Dormer at least, let me tell you in justice to him, hasn't waited till you were celebrated to want to see you again—he stands there open-eyed—for the simple reason that he hadn't the least idea of your renown. I had to announce it to him."
"Haven't you seen me act?" Miriam put, without reproach, to her host.
"I'll go to-night," he handsomely declared.
"You have your terrible House, haven't you? What do they call it—the demands of public life?" Miriam continued: in answer to which Gabriel explained that he had the demands of private life as well, inasmuch as he was in love—he was on the point of being married. She listened to this with participation; then she said: "Ah then do bring your—what do they call her in English? I'm always afraid of saying something improper—your future. I'll send you a box, under the circumstances; you'll like that better." She added that if he were to paint her he would have to see her often on the stage, wouldn't he? to profit by the optique de la scène—what did they call that in English?—studying her and fixing his impression. But before he had time to meet this proposition she asked him if it disgusted him to hear her speak like that, as if she were always posing and thinking about herself, living only to be looked at, thrusting forward her person. She already often got sick of doing so, but à la guerre comme à la guerre.