She asked why he pronounced her simple, but he judged it best and more consonant with fair play to defer even a treatment of this branch of the question; so that to change the subject he said: "Be sure you don't betray me to your friend Mr. Nash." "Betray you? Do you mean about your recommending affectation?" "Dear me, no; he recommends it himself. That is, he practises it, and on a scale!" "But he makes one hate it." "He proves what I mean," said Sherringham: "that the great comedian's the one who raises it to a science. If we paid ten shillings to listen to Mr. Nash we should think him very fine. But we want to know what it's supposed to be." "It's too odious, the way he talks about us!" Miriam cried assentingly. "About 'us'?" "Us poor actors." "It's the competition he dislikes," Peter laughed. "However, he's very good-natured; he lent mamma thirty pounds," the girl added honestly. Our young man, at this information, was not able to repress a certain small twinge noted by his companion and of which she appeared to mistake the meaning. "Of course he'll get it back," she went on while he looked at her in silence a little. Fortune had not supplied him profusely with money, but his emotion was caused by no foresight of his probably having also to put his hand in his pocket for Mrs. Rooth. It was simply the instinctive recoil of a fastidious nature from the idea of familiar intimacy with people who lived from hand to mouth, together with a sense that this intimacy would have to be defined if it was to go much further. He would wish to know what it was supposed to be, like Nash's histrionics. Miriam after a moment mistook his thought still more completely, and in doing so flashed a portent of the way it was in her to strike from time to time a note exasperatingly, almost consciously vulgar, which one would hate for the reason, along with others, that by that time one would be in love with her. "Well then, he won't--if you don't believe it!" she easily laughed. He was saying to himself that the only possible form was that they should borrow only from him. "You're a funny man. I make you blush," she persisted. "I must reply with the _tu quoque_, though I've not that effect on you." "I don't understand," said the girl. "You're an extraordinary young lady." "You mean I'm horrid. Well, I daresay I am. But I'm better when you know me." He made no direct rejoinder to this, but after a moment went on: "Your mother must repay that money. I'll give it her." "You had better give it _him_!" cried Miriam. "If once mamma has it--!" She interrupted herself and with another and a softer tone, one of her professional transitions, remarked: "I suppose you've never known any one that was poor."