"She speaks a special language; practically it isn't false, because it renders her thought and those who know her understand it."
"But she doesn't use it only to those who know her," Biddy returned, "since she asked me, who have so little the honour of her acquaintance, to keep you away to-night. How am I to know that she meant by that that I'm to urge you on to go?"
He was on the point of replying, "Because you've my word for it"; but he shrank in fact from giving his word—he had some fine scruples—and sought to relieve his embarrassment by a general tribute. "Dear Biddy, you're delightfully acute: you're quite as clever as Miss Rooth." He felt, however, that this was scarcely adequate and he continued: "The truth is that its being important for me to go is a matter quite independent of that young lady's wishing it or not wishing it. There happens to be a definite intrinsic propriety in it which determines the thing and which it would take me long to explain."
"I see. But fancy your 'explaining' to me: you make me feel so indiscreet!" the girl cried quickly—an exclamation which touched him because he was not aware that, quick as it had been, she had still had time to be struck first—though she wouldn't for the world have expressed it—with the oddity of such a duty at such a season. In fact that oddity, during a silence of some minutes, came back to Peter himself: the note had been forced—it sounded almost ignobly frivolous from a man on the eve of proceeding to a high diplomatic post. The effect of this, none the less, was not to make him break out with "Hang it, I will keep my engagement to your mother!" but to fill him with the wish to shorten his present strain by taking Biddy the rest of the way in a cab. He was uncomfortable, and there were hansoms about that he looked at wistfully. While he was so occupied his companion took up the talk by an abrupt appeal.
"Why did she say that Nick oughtn't to have resigned his seat?"
"Oh I don't know. It struck her so. It doesn't matter much."
But Biddy kept it up. "If she's an artist herself why doesn't she like people to go in for art, especially when Nick has given his time to painting her so beautifully? Why does she come there so often if she disapproves of what he has done?"
"Oh Miriam's disapproval—it doesn't count; it's a manner of speaking."
"Of speaking untruths, do you mean? Does she think just the reverse—is that the way she talks about everything?"
"We always admire most what we can do least," Peter brought forth; "and Miriam of course isn't political. She ranks painters more or less with her own profession, about which already, new as she is to it, she has no illusions. They're all artists; it's the same general sort of thing. She prefers men of the world—men of action."