Besides, _could_ one make her deviate? If she had no disposition to philander what was his warrant for supposing she could be corrupted into respectability? How could the career--his career--speak to a nature that had glimpses as vivid as they were crude of such a different range and for which success meant quite another sauce to the dish? Would the brilliancy of marrying Peter Sherringham be such a bribe to relinquishment? How could he think so without pretensions of the sort he pretended exactly not to flaunt?--how could he put himself forward as so high a prize? Relinquishment of the opportunity to exercise a rare talent was not, in the nature of things, an easy effort to a young lady who was herself presumptuous as well as ambitious. Besides, she might eat her cake and have it--might make her fortune both on the stage and in the world. Successful actresses had ended by marrying dukes, and was not that better than remaining obscure and marrying a commoner? There were moments when he tried to pronounce the girl's "gift" not a force to reckon with; there was so little to show for it as yet that the caprice of believing in it would perhaps suddenly leave him. But his conviction that it was real was too uneasy to make such an experiment peaceful, and he came back, moreover, to his deepest impression--that of her being of the inward mould for which the only consistency is the play of genius. Hadn't Madame Carre declared at the last that she could "do anything"? It was true that if Madame Carre had been mistaken in the first place she might also be mistaken in the second. But in this latter case she would be mistaken with him--and such an error would be too like a truth.