"She's a great thing for you and me, but we're a small thing for her." "Well, a good many small things, if they but stick together, may make up a mass," Gabriel said. "There must always be the man, you see. He's the indispensable element in such a life, and he'll be the last thing she'll ever lack." "What man are you talking about?" Peter asked with imperfect ease. "The man of the hour, whoever he is. She'll inspire innumerable devotions." "Of course she will, and they'll be precisely a part of the insufferable side of her life." "Insufferable to whom?" Nash demanded. "Don't forget that the insufferable side of her life will be just the side she'll thrive on. You can't eat your cake and have it, and you can't make omelettes without breaking eggs. You can't at once sit by the fire and parade about the world, and you can't take all chances without having some adventures. You can't be a great actress without the luxury of nerves. Without a plentiful supply--or without the right ones--you'll only be second fiddle. If you've all the tense strings you may take life for your fiddlestick. Your nerves and your adventures, your eggs and your cake, are part of the cost of the most expensive of professions. You play with human passions, with exaltations and ecstasies and terrors, and if you trade on the fury of the elements you must know how to ride the storm." Well, Peter thought it over. "Those are the fine old commonplaces about the artistic temperament, but I usually find the artist a very meek, decent, little person." "You _never_ find the artist--you only find his work, and that's all you need find. When the artist's a woman, and the woman's an actress, meekness and decency will doubtless be there in the right proportions," Nash went on. "Miriam will represent them for you, if you give her her cue, with the utmost charm." "Of course she'll inspire devotions--_that's_ all right," said Peter with a wild cheerfulness. "And of course they'll inspire responses, and with that consequence--don't you see?--they'll mitigate her solitude, they'll even enliven it," Nash set forth. "She'll probably box a good many ears: that'll be lively!" Peter returned with some grimness. "Oh magnificent!--it will be a merry life. Yet with its tragic passages, its distracted or its pathetic hours," Gabriel insisted. "In short, a little of everything." They walked on without further speech till at last Peter resumed: "The best thing for a woman in her situation is to marry some decent care-taking man." "Oh I daresay she'll do that too!" Nash laughed; a remark as a result of which his companion lapsed afresh into silence. Gabriel left him a little to enjoy this; after which he added: "There's somebody she'd marry to-morrow." Peter wondered. "Do you mean her friend Dashwood?" "No, no, I mean Nick Dormer." "She'd marry _him_?" Peter gasped. "I mean her head's full of him. But she'll hardly get the chance."