"Remember," he could immediately say, "that you've made a great point of your liking me. Wouldn't you do so still more if I were heroic?"
She showed him, for all her high impatience now, the interest of a long look. "I think I should pity you in such a cause. Give it all to her; don't throw away a real happiness!"
"Ah you can't back out of your position with a few vague and even rather impertinent words!" Peter protested. "You accuse me of swallowing my opinions, but you swallow your pledges. You've painted in heavenly colours the sacrifice I'm talking of, and now you must take the consequences."
"The consequences?"
"Why my coming back in a year to square you."
"Ah you're a bore!"—she let him have it at last. "Come back when you like. I don't wonder you've grown desperate, but fancy me then!" she added as she looked past him at a new interlocutor.
"Yes, but if he'll square you!" Peter heard Mrs. Rooth's voice respond all persuasively behind him. She had stolen up to the window now, had passed the threshold, was in the room, but her daughter had not been startled. "What is it he wants to do, dear?" she continued to Miriam.
"To induce me to marry him if he'll go upon the stage. He'll practise over there—where he's going—and then come back and appear. Isn't it too dreadful? Talk him out of it, stay with him, soothe him!" the girl hurried on. "You'll find some drinks and some biscuits in the cupboard—keep him with you, pacify him, give him his little supper. Meanwhile I'll go to mine; I'll take the brougham; don't follow!"
With which words Miriam bounded into the garden, her white drapery shining for an instant in the darkness before she disappeared. Peter looked about him to pick up his hat, but while he did so heard the bang of the gate and the quick carriage get into motion. Mrs. Rooth appeared to sway violently and in opposed directions: that of the impulse to rush after Miriam and that of the extraordinary possibility to which the young lady had alluded. She was in doubt, yet at a venture, detaining him with a maternal touch, she twinkled up at their visitor like an insinuating glow-worm. "I'm so glad you came."
"I'm not. I've got nothing by it," Peter said as he found his hat.