she would gladly have fled from the room instead of
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coming forward to speak to these people. She glanced
at Alan Gore, and something in his face seemed to
reassure her. He imderstood, she felt sure, all the
misery she was enduring.
She pulled herself together with a g^eat effort, de-
termined not to show what she suffered.
" I don't think that you and Mrs. Courteis have
met?" Gore said; and Miriam found courage to look
at Mrs. Courteis. The sight reassured her. This was
no vision of fashion, only an elderly woman, carelessly
dressed in a sloppy, black tea gown (a garment Miriam
had never seen before, and did not admire). Her hair
was very untidy, as if she had not taken the trouble to
brush it before coming out, and she gave Miriam a
lackluster stare that certainly did not express any
surprise at her dress.
" I'm glad to meet you. Miss Sadler," she said in
an apathetic voice. " Mr. Courteis has told me about
you ; you know Aunt Geraldine, I think, but I forget
what you write."
Miriam breathed more freely; she had nothing to
fear from the criticism of this woman, who looked
as if a costume of paint and feathers would scarcely
have surprised her out of her apathy.
But the feeling of relief was short-lived. For as
as they sat down to dinner, Courteis began to speak
about a public question which had, it appeared, incrim-
inated several persons known to him and to the Gores,
but, of course, unknown to Miriam. The kindest
hosts will not hold back from such a topic because one
of their guests cannot join in the conversation. Mir-
iam must sit silent. They all seemed to forget her
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for a time; even Mrs. Courteis was roused to interest,
and had plenty to say on the subject. " If I could
even put in one intelligent word," she thought; but
the intelligent word was not there to say. Suddenly
Gore paused in the heat of the discussion and turned
toward her.
" I'm afraid all this is not very interesting to you? "
he said apologetically.
She wondered for a moment if she would pretend
that it was. Then she remembered her resolutions
against pretense of any kind.
" No," she answered. " I really don't know what
you are talking about."
Delia and Courteis laughed, and Mrs. Courteis
turned a languid eye on her; she had not enough
humor to laugh at anything. As for Miriam, she
more nearly cried at that moment.
" How tiresome it must be for them to feel they
must talk about the few things I understand," she
thought. "And my subjects are so terribly limited.
I think if they begin to talk kindly about Hindcup, I
shall begin to cry." But no one was tactless enough
to do that.
" Can you tell me if Herman is playing anywhere
this week, Mr. Courteis?" Delia asked. "We want
to go to hear him."
" Herman? No, he isn't playing again in London;
he's leaving on Saturday."
"Oh, what a pity! Miss Sadler has never heard
him play."
" The most individual artist I know," Courteis pro-
nounced (he was fond of pronouncing on things and
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people) ; " wonderfully individual ; almost too much
so for my theories of Art. But that is why people love
him as they do."
" Do you think Art ought to be individual ? " Mir-
iam ventured to say.
"There's a difference between 'individual' and
' personal/ " Courteis began, in his laying-down-the-
law manner. " It's personality that I don't admit ; a
great snare with women. Miss Sadler ; remember that ;
they can't keep themselves out of what they try to do.
That 'Treatise on Democracy,' now, was all mixed
up with personal feeling, wasn't it?" He leaned
across the table, looking hard at her as he spoke.
" Now, why did Democracy happen to interest you
so much?" he asked, forgetting surely, as he asked
the question, all that he knew about the girl, and her
circumstances.
Miriam was helping herself to something at that
moment, and paused, the spoon lifted in her hand,
while she replied steadily :
" Because I belong to the so-called lower classes, Mr.
Courteis, and their struggles after something happier
and better interest me more than an)rthing else just
now."
The man who was* holding the dish toward Miriam
in the usual automatic way, looked down at her sud-
denly with interest and surprise. He told the story
afterwards to the other servants, and they agreed that
the new visitor was astonishingly honest, and a good
deal to be respected for it. Courteis, on his part, was
rather annoyed by his own want of tact in asking such
a question. Delia and Alan Gore only were unmoved.
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" Now I call this very interesting," said Gore. " And
I must entirely and flatly disagree with you, Courteis,
and agree with Miss Sadler. It's the personal note
you condemn in the 'Treatise on Democracy' that
makes the new, valuable quality in it. We want ex-
actly this — ^people from each class to write about it
from' the inside — ^they know."
"You told me yourself, the first day you met me,
Mr. Courteis," said Miriam, " that I must write about
what I knew, and about nothing else." A little smile
dawned round the comers of her mouth ; she had for-
gotten her miseries of a short time ago.
" And can't you do that without being personal ? "
Courteis asked. He leaned forward, pushing his des-
sert plate and glasses to one side, as if they intercepted
his view. " Take any instance — take me, if you like —
I know a vast deal about the editing life. I could sit
down and write all about it; but need I make it per-
sonal because I know it all? You must generalize
personal experience before you get valuable results ; do
keep that in mind. Experience is only the raw mate-
rial that you have to manufacture into the right stuff.
As well say a cocoon is worth the same as a yard of
silk."
So the argument went and came. Miriam was her-
self again, happy and interested. After their guests
had gone, she came up to where Delia and Alan Gore
stood, and told them how much she had enjoyed the
evening: "Though I began it more miserably than
I can ever say — " Her voice faltered, and she added :
** It was my dress, you know."
They both laughed, just a little, though, for the sin-
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cerity of pain in her voice forbade too much merriment
on their part.
" Wait till the new gowns arrive," said Delia, " and
it will be worth all you have suffered. We are to dine
with the Courteises on Friday. I hope they will have
come by that time."
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CHAPTER XVIII
On Friday the new gowns came, and Delia insisted
that Miriam's hair should be more becomingly ar-
ranged before they were tried on; but at this sug-
gestion she blushed hotly.
" O Miss Gore, I couldn't have your maid do my
hair ; she wouldn't like it ; she must know that I am not
a person who is accustomed to have other people wait
upon me," she cried. Delia considered for a moment ;
she had not thought of this difficulty. Then she sud-
denly bent down and kissed the girl's hot cheek.
" My dear, will you let me do it for you? " she said
gently ; '* and don't you think you might stop calling
me Miss Gore now ? "
Miriam returned the kiss with lips that trembled.
" Yes," she said. " Of course I don't mind letting you
do it, if you will be so very kind — Delia."
So her hair was well done for the first time in her
life, and then the new gowns were tried on. She
beheld the effect of th^ morning gown in silence ; with-
out a word she divested herself of it and donned the
evening dress ; but to Delia's surprise, as she led Mir-
iam toward the mirror, she saw that her eyes were full
of tears.
"Oh, do you not like them? Have I made you
spend your money for things you don't admire?"
Delia exclaimed in dismay, for Miriam had turned
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away from the mirror, and, regardless of the fine new
dress, flung herself into the nearest chair and sobbed.
Delia knelt down beside her and took her hand in great
distress.
" It's wrong — it's wrong and cruel that knowing
should make all the difference ! " Miriam sobbed out
at last. " Why can't we all know, and look right, and
feel happy?"
" Oh, that would be quite dull," said Delia lamely.
" It is far more interesting to discover about things,
isn't it?"
" No, it is not," said Miriam almost roughly. She
rose and gave herself a sort of shake, dried her eyes,
and walked across to the mirror again.
"I look altogether different," she said. "And if
I had only known before what to buy, and how to put
it on, I might have been spared so much ! "
It was undeniable, and recognizing this Delia went
away and left her alone to get more acquainted with
her new appearance.
Miriam stood gazing at her changed self for a long
time, with a mixture of pain and pleasure; she was
so changed!
" I don't think I mind Mr. Gore noticing, he is so
above everything, somehow," she thought. " But the
servants will notice. Oh, how I hate that they should
know that this is my first evening dress ! "
Delia came in again at that moment carrying an
opera cloak, which she insisted that Miriam must
put on. It was quite as painful to Delia to offer this
as for Miriam to accept it ; but it was obvious that she
could not assume her black cloth jacket over the new
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dress, so she put on the borrowed cloak with as good
a grace as might be, and they went downstairs to-
gether. Alan Gore was waiting for them in the hall ;
Miriam wondered if he noticed the change in her ap-
pearance, and felt certain that if he did not the butler
did — which was undoubtedly true. She gathered up
her voluminous new skirts with an unpracticed grip,
and scurried to the carriage.
" Now we must all be as intelligent as possible,"
said Alan Gore, as the carriage drove off. " You es-
pecially. Miss Sadler, must be on your mettle ; you're
on approval for The Advance Guard, remember."
He leaned back in the carriage and looked at her
with an amused expression, which Miriam at once
construed into surprise at her changed appearance.
He was, after all, as she grudgingly admitted to her-
self at that moment, just a young man, like any other ;
not too kind to notice her embarrassment, and be a
little amused at it. Till now, she had put Alan Gore
so apart from the rest of the world in her admiring
thoughts that she had never considered him in this
light at all. It quite startled her to do so.
" He will love some woman and marry her," she
thought. " What would it be like to be honored by
the love of a man like him? Yet, doubtless, the world
contained even then the woman who was destined for
this honor."
" A penny for your thoughts ! " said Delia, and Mir-
iam told a direct lie.
" I am keeping all my thoughts for Mr. Courteis ;
I have none to spare," she answered.
"I always think Courteis has such an interesting
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house/' said Gore ; " as if all manner of stories looked
out of the windows."
" All the remarkable people who have gone in and
out of it have left a spiritual presence behind them,"
said Delia, laughing. " See, here we are — rather
grubby / call it, with these small windows ! "
As Miriam got out and went up the steps, she
turned quickly and nodded to Alan Gore :
" I see, I see just what you mean," she said.
" Things have happened here ; I should expect things
to happen here again."
" You see, Delia, you alone have no imagination.
Miss Sadler and I know all about this house ! " said
Alan. They were shown into the drawing-room, which
was dark, and shabbily furnished. The old Turkey
carpet was worn almost threadbare ; but the walls were
lined with bookcases, and this made the room home-
like. Mrs. Courteis gave them a listless greeting.
"I'll give you a seat opposite my new picture,"
Courteis said to Miriam. " Tell me what you think
of it."
She looked in the direction he indicated, then sud-
denly rose, half-startled, resting her hand on the arm
of her chair.
" Oh, who is it, Mr. Courteis? " she exclaimed. " I
think I wish to get away from him."
"There! isn't that a compliment to the painter?"
said Courteis. "Why, that's Herman, of course. I
forgot you had never seen him. Well, there he is;
don't the eyes follow you about the room ? "
Yes, Miriam thought, they did. She actually edged
her chair round as if to avoid them, and then turned
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back again to look. The picture represented a very
young man with a sweet, boyish mouth and terrible
eyes. As she looked at it, Miriam instinctively drew
back and pressed her fingers against her own eyes, as
if she had seen something too brilliant for them.
"Very good; a great deal of chic about it, isn't
there?" said Courteis to Alan Gore. " He sent it to
me last week ; it's the work of that new French painter,
Larame ; excellent, I call it."
" Why does he look like that ? " Miriam asked.
" Because he is Herman, and there is none other
beside him ; that's all the reason I can give you for his
looks," said Courteis. " You'll find that people of very
exceptional talent generally look unlike the rest of the
worid."
The random remark sent a pang to Miriam's heart ;
not that she considered herself a person of exceptional
talent, but she thought how unlike those other people
she must have looked before she got into the ordinary
garb of their world. Her self-consciousness came
back fourfold, and once again she writhed under the
sense of her own deficiencies.
When they went down to dinner, Miriam made the
usual mistake of all young sailors on the sea of life:
she tried to make interesting and clever talk, instead
of waiting and letting her remarks come of themselves.
Of course she did not talk well, and then, overcome
with mortification, she became entirely silent.
" I can't talk either their talk or my own," she told
herself in despair. However, it is very often only
after we have confessed defeat that we rise to conquer.
Miriam gare up the attempt to speak cleverly, and be-
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fore she was aware of it, constraint had vanished and
she was talking her best. Hers, as you may imagine,
was not talk of the kind which is fatally easy among
people of a certain amount of cleverness and cultiva-
tion — lightly speculative in tone, and helped out by
apposite quotations from modern writers. Of this sort
of talk Miriam was entirely innocent. All that she said
was the result of her own first-hand observation and
reflection; she had not read enough to quote other
people's ideas readily to her own destruction. Cour-
teis was delighted. Fresh " brain-stuff," as he called
it, was the material he was most anxious to secure
for his magazine, and he found it woefully difficult to
do so. But here was a young woman singularly un-
touched as yet by the paralyzing finger of culture;
would it be possible, he wondered, to get her to write
a good style without spoiling this freshness of out-
look? Uncultivated writing he could not endure for
a moment; but how was this delightful freshness to
be retained and cultivation added? It was a problem.
When dinner was over, Courteis led them into his
study, ostensibly to see some books. After these had
been admired he took up another large volume that
lay on his desk, and handed it to Miriam.
" See, Miss Sadler," he said. " I wish you to try
something. Lx)ok at this book — pretty stiff reading,
and a lot of it. Will you take it home with you and
write out an abstract of it, chapter by chapter, using
the simplest, most lucid words you know to express
what you find in it ? Then, when you have done this,
will you write an abstract of the whole, condensed as
much as possible, and send it to me? Perhaps it won't
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do. Perhaps it will. In any case, your work wont
be lost ; you will find you have gained an immense deal
by the time the thing is finished. Will you try?"
" What would I gain ? " she asked.
"Lucidity, concentration of ideas, power of work.
You won't regret it, I tell you."
Miriam lifted the big book and turned over the
pages, reading a sentence here and there. Then she
laid it down.
" Yes, I will try. How long may I take? "
" Oh, I won't bind you down ; your own time, as
you are a beginner."
Gore had been standing beside them, listening with
frank interest to all they said.
" Now, then, there's a job for you ! " he said, turn-
ing to Miriam.
" Beautiful ! " she exclaimed suddenly, and both the
men laughed.
" She has the enthusiasm of the beginner for work,"
said Courteis. " Wait until she has been in harness
a little longer."
The girl turned her large, somber eyes upon him
in surprise.
"Are you not fond of work, Mr. Courteis?" she
asked.
" Yes, love it and loathe it by turns. It's as neces-
sary as daily bread, of course; but have you never
loathed your food ? "
" Never, when I am well," she answered gravely.
" That's about it ; but one sometimes has a sick
mind, you know, or will know when you are older
and sadder."
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"It's a very grave symptom, indeed, when work
becomes loathsome," said Gore.
" Yes, the man who loathes his work had better go
down on his knees; he's past helping himself," said
Courteis. He turned away as he spoke, and began to
arrange the books he had taken down from the shelves.
Miriam carried the big volume back into the drawing-
room with her, to show it to Delia, nor would she be
parted from it, but insisted on taking it back that night
herself, instead of letting Courteis send it to her. In
the darkness, as they drove home, she held it against
her thumping heart, as tenderly as a mother holds her
first baby to the breast.
"At last, at last; something tangible to try," she
said to herself.
Oh, effort, effort I The staflf, the hope of our race I
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CHAPTER XIX
Before Miriam had been ten days in their house,
she had lost all feeling of constraint and shyness with
both Delia and Alan Gore. They had that s)mipathetic
quality which is the most charming characteristic that
man or woman can possess, and she found herself tell-
ing them all the petty details of her life. They seemed
never to tire of her judicious descriptions of pro-
vincial society.
" Don't ask me more about my stupid life in stupid
Hindcup," she would say, and then Delia would as-
sure her that it was infinitely more amusing than or-
dinary society life. Alan Gore was particularly fond
of her accounts of conversation in Hindcup.
" Tell me again of the young man who will never
speak of anything but hydropathics or photography,"
he would say ; and, with a certain acid pleasure in the
task, she would reproduce some of Dr. Pratt's con-
versational tragedies. Miriam was not a vindictive
woman, but she had been laughed at and despised by
the natives of Hindcup for years, so it was perhaps
natural that she should take a little revenge now.
" Now, do Mrs. Hobbes on ' girls,' " Delia would
plead. " I'm so pleased with the term, I shall never
call my servants BXiything else now."
Miriam would comply with the request; but while
her audience swayed with laughter, her own heart felt
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heavy enough. For, after all, this society she made
fun of was her society, her real sphere, and this happy
world where she now found herself, only an unreal,
delicious phase of existence.
" I'm not going to do it any more. I won't tell you
once again about Mrs. Hobbes and her ' girls,* or Dr.
Pratt on Photography, or Aunt Pillar on servants*
allowances. I shall be back among them all so soon,**
she said at last.
" Seines de la Vie de Province*' said Gore, laugh-
ing. " You must begin a new Balzacian series.*' He
brought her a bundle of Balzac next day, and com-
mended them to her attention. " That*s what one
mind made out of the provinces,** he said.
It was a new and wonderful feeling to Miriam, this
of having people interested in her. For so long the
ugly duckling of her family, she had quite come to
think of herself as nothing else. Now her opinion was
treated with respect, and what was far more subtly
flattering, she felt herself interesting to the people in
the world she would have most longed to interest. She
began to believe in herself, with a sort of trembling
incredulity ; perhaps after all she was not such a poor
creature as they thought her in Hindcup f
The lonely soul, on first finding itself understood,
experiences a peculiar and exquisite rapture. The
whole world of sense seems to acquire a new reality
and vividness for it. " I am bom again,** it says, and
rightly ; for with appreciation every faculty is bright-
ened and strengthened; half-dormant characteristics
are roused into activity; the whole being grows and
blossoms out.
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In the company of these two people who believed
in and understood her, you would never have recog-
nized the Miriam Sadler of Hindcup. She drank in
their talk and their ideas, as the thirsty ground drinks
in the rain. But her position was not only that of
a receiver; her contributions to the talk that went on
were really the valuable part of it, for it was she who
always started the topics — and a good topic for con-
versation is as important as a fox for a hunt. Know-
ing her own ignorance, she always put her ideas in the
form of a question, and she would start an argument
thus:
"Do you think, Mr. Gore, that all the Arts are
transferable; that eyeryihing expressed in painting
might be expressed in music or in words ? Or do you
think that there are some phases of feeling that can
only be expressed by one of the Arts, some by
another?"
And then Gore would discuss the whole question
with her in his kind, interested way. It would be im-
possible to describe the joy these conversations were
to Miriam, or how much she gained by intercourse
for the first time with a man of powerful intellect and
cultivation. If Gore could not answer questions, he
would frankly admit his inability to do so ; but when
they had talked the question over, it was always,
somehow or other, robbed of its stark terrors. Miriam,
like most young people, had tormented herself with
theological problems. The tmintelligent religiosity of
her mother and Mr. Hobbes had been the worst pos-
sible influence in this direction, and she had despaired
of comfort. Now, with the sudden overwhelming re-
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lief that a frightened child feels when it can sob out
its terrors to some older person, she found herself tell-
ing Alan Gore all these fears and scruples. They were
not at all extraordinary ; nor were his suggestions for
their allaying extraordinary either; but they seemed
so to Miriam. This man, whom Mrs. Sadler had
somewhat rashly labeled a freethinker, appeared to
her daughter almost in the light of a divinity. That
he was a man like other men, with faults and weak-
nesses, she could scarcely believe; and yet Delia as-
sured her that this was the case.
"Alan is all very well," she said, with the awful
uncompromising knowledge of a sister; "but, of
course, he is far from an angel."
It was late one night, or rather very early one morn-
ing, that Miriam woke up to a sudden realization of
her own feelings.
"Oh, I am making a mistake!" she cried aloud,
sitting up in bed, and stretching out her hands, as if
toward some unseen helper. The sound of her own
voice speaking in the dark frightened her, and she
lay down again, wide-eyed, staring into the darkness,
staring into the future, into what might come to her.
That arch fear which eclipses every other had as-
sailed her; she was afraid of herself.
"Am I going to ruin my life, such as it is?" she
asked herself. " Is the whole world after this going
to be empty and worthless to me? Oh, surely not! "
And then unflinchingly she set herself to face the
truth. She was no more to Alan Gore than any other
acquaintance ; he had been very kind to her, as he was
to everyone, that was all. Then surely she had enough
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pride and self-respect to keep herself from loving him.
That was the situation — ^no more or less.
With one of those magnificent rallies of pride which
are in women the equivalent of men's valor, Miriam
gathered all the strength of her nature to her aid.