"Would you accept them from me?" he demanded; "accept the manly, the professional sacrifice, see me throw up my work, my prospects—of course I should have to do that—and simply become your appendage?"
She raised her arms for a prodigious fall. "My dear fellow, you invite me with the best conscience in the world to become yours."
"The cases are not equal. You'd make of me the husband of an actress. I should make of you the wife of an ambassador."
"The husband of an actress, c'est bientôt dit, in that tone of scorn! If you're consistent," said Miriam, all lucid and hard, "it ought to be a proud position for you."
"What do you mean, if I'm consistent?"
"Haven't you always insisted on the beauty and interest of our art and the greatness of our mission? Haven't you almost come to blows with poor Gabriel Nash about it? What did all that mean if you won't face the first consequences of your theory? Either it was an enlightened conviction or it was an empty pretence. If you were only talking against time I'm glad to know it," she rolled out with a darkening eye. "The better the cause, it seems to me, the better the deed; and if the theatre is important to the 'human spirit,' as you used to say so charmingly, and if into the bargain you've the pull of being so fond of me, I don't see why it should be monstrous of you to give us your services in an intelligent, indirect way. Of course if you're not serious we needn't talk at all; but if you are, with your conception of what the actor can do, why is it so base to come to the actor's aid, taking one devotion with another? If I'm so fine I'm worth looking after a bit, and the place where I'm finest is the place to look after me!"
He had a long pause again, taking her in as it seemed to him he had never done. "You were never finer than at this minute, in the deepest domesticity of private life. I've no conception whatever of what the actor can do, and no theory whatever about the importance of the theatre. Any infatuation of that sort has completely dropped from me, and for all I care the theatre may go to the dogs—which I judge it altogether probably will!"
"You're dishonest, you're ungrateful, you're false!" Miriam flashed. "It was the theatre brought you here—if it hadn't been for the theatre I never would have looked at you. It was in the name of the theatre you first made love to me; it's to the theatre you owe every advantage that, so far as I'm concerned, you possess."
"I seem to possess a great many!" poor Peter derisively groaned.
"You might avail yourself better of those you have! You make me angry, but I want to be fair," said the shining creature, "and I can't be unless you are. You're not fair, nor candid, nor honourable, when you swallow your words and abjure your faith, when you throw over old friends and old memories for a selfish purpose."