“No man,” he remarked, “ever did solid work except in his own strength.  One can be encouraged in effort, but the effort must originate in one’s self.”

Miriam kept silence.  He put a direct question.

“Have you yourself encouraged him to pursue this idea?”

“I have not discouraged him.”

“In your brother’s case, discouragement would probably be the result if direct encouragement were withheld.”

Again she said nothing, and again Mallard felt a desire to subdue the pride, or whatever it might be, that had checked the growth of friendliness between them in its very beginning.  He remained mute for a long time, until they were nearing Pozzuoli, but Miriam showed no disposition to be the first to speak.  At length he said abruptly: 

“Shall you go to the San Carlo during the winter?”

“The San Carlo?” she asked inquiringly.

“The opera.”

Mallard was in a strange mood.  Whenever he looked ahead at Cecily, he had a miserable longing which crushed his heart down, down; in struggling against this, he felt that Mrs. Baske’s proximity was an aid, but that it would be still more so if he could move her to any unusual self-revelation.  He had impulses to offend her, to irritate her prejudices—­anything, so she should but be moved.  This question that fell. from him was mild in comparison with some of the subjects that pressed on his harassed brain.

“I don’t go to theatres,” Miriam replied distantly.

“That is losing much pleasure.”

“The word has very different meanings.”

She was roused.  Mallard observed with a perverse satisfaction the scorn implied in this rejoinder.  He noted that her features had more decided beauty than when placid.

“I imagine,” he resumed, smiling at her, “that the life of an artist must seem to you frivolous, if not something worse.  I mean an artist in the sense of a painter.”

“I cannot think it the highest kind of life,” Miriam replied, also smiling, but ominously.

“As Miss Doran does,” added Mallard, his eyes happening to catch Cecily’s face as it looked backwards, and his tongue speaking recklessly.

“There are very few subjects on which Miss Doran and I think alike.”

He durst not pursue this; in his state of mind, the danger of committing some flagrant absurdity was too great.  The subject attracted him like an evil temptation, for he desired to have Miriam speak of Cecily.  But he mastered himself.

“The artist’s life may be the highest of which a particular man is capable.  For instance, I think it is so in my own case.”

Miriam seemed about to keep silence again, but ultimately she spoke.  The voice suggested that upon her too there was a constraint of some kind.

“On what grounds do you believe that?”

His eyes sought her face rapidly.  Was she ironical at his expense?  That would be new light upon her mind, for hitherto she had seemed to him painfully literal.  Irony meant intellect; mere scorn or pride might signify anything but that.  And he was hoping to find reserves of power in her, such as would rescue her from the imputation of commonplaceness in her beliefs.  Testing her with his eye, he answered meaningly: