"That's better," said Miriam; "for a demon that's kept under is a shabby little demon. Don't let's be shabby." Then she added: "Do you really go away the beginning of next week?"
"Monday night if possible."
"Ah that's but to Paris. Before you go to your new post they must give you an interval here."
"I shan't take it—I'm so tremendously keen for my duties. I shall insist on going sooner. Oh," he went on, "I shall be concentrated now."
"I'll come and act there." She met it all—she was amused and amusing. "I've already forgotten what it was I wanted to discuss with you," she said—"it was some trumpery stuff. What I want to say now is only one thing: that it's not in the least true that because my life pitches me in every direction and mixes me up with all sorts of people—or rather with one sort mainly, poor dears!—I haven't a decent character, I haven't common honesty. Your sympathy, your generosity, your patience, your precious suggestions, our dear sweet days last summer in Paris, I shall never forget. You're the best—you're different from all the others. Think of me as you please and make profane jokes about my mating with a disguised 'Arty'—I shall think of you only in one way. I've a great respect for you. With all my heart I hope you'll be a great diplomatist. God bless you, dear clever man."
She got up as she spoke and in so doing glanced at the clock—a movement that somehow only added to the noble gravity of her discourse: she was considering his time so much more than her own. Sherringham, at this, rising too, took out his watch and stood a moment with his eyes bent upon it, though without in the least seeing what the needles marked. "You'll have to go, to reach the theatre at your usual hour, won't you? Let me not keep you. That is, let me keep you only long enough just to say this, once for all, as I shall never speak of it again. I'm going away to save myself," he frankly said, planted before her and seeking her eyes with his own. "I ought to go, no doubt, in silence, in decorum, in virtuous submission to hard necessity—without asking for credit or sympathy, without provoking any sort of scene or calling attention to my fortitude. But I can't—upon my soul I can't. I can go, I can see it through, but I can't hold my tongue. I want you to know all about it, so that over there, when I'm bored to death, I shall at least have the exasperatingly vain consolation of feeling that you do know—and that it does neither you nor me any good!"
He paused a moment; on which, as quite vague, she appealed. "That I 'do know' what?"
"That I've a consuming passion for you and that it's impossible."
"Oh impossible, my friend!" she sighed, but with a quickness in her assent.
"Very good; it interferes, the gratification of it would interfere fatally, with the ambition of each of us. Our ambitions are inferior and odious, but we're tied fast to them."