One perceives how far this mood had gone with Mr James when the hero of _The Tragic Muse_ (1890) refuses a seat in Parliament and the hand of a wealthy widow in order that he might go on painting. From Mr James, to whom marrying a widow appeared as much superior to marrying a spinster as privately acquiring a "piece" from the dispersed collection of a deceased connoisseur of repute is to buying old furniture with no guarantee but one's own approval, this was a portentous incident. And there is vast significance in his sympathetic representation of Miriam Rooth, the young actress to whom the title refers, for before this period he would never have accepted the genius of the black-browed, untidy girl as an excuse for her lack of money and social position and manners. It had hitherto been his grimly expressed opinion that "the life of a woman is essentially an affair of private relations," and he had refused to dramatise in his imagination anything concerning women save their failures and successes as sexual beings; which is like judging a cutlet not by its flavour, but by the condition of its pink-paper frill. That time had gone. He had abandoned all his prejudices in despair, and for many years to come was to show a divine charity, freely permitting every encountered thing to impress its essence on the receptive wax of his consciousness. For the next twelve years "impressions," as in his happy foreign childhood, "were not merely all right, but were the dearest things in the world." IV THE CRYSTAL BOWL