"Nothing," she said a trifle tartly. "How can I? Granting that my voice is worth the trouble, would you like me to go and study in the East or abroad? Would you be willing to bear the expense of such an undertaking? To have me leave Jack to nursemaids and you to your logs?"
"So that in the fullness of time I might secure a little reflected glory as the husband of Madame Fyfe, the famous soprano," he replied slowly. "Well, I can't say that's a particularly pleasing prospect."
"Then why ask me what I'm going to do with it?" she flung back impatiently. "It'll be an asset—like my looks—and—and—"
She dropped her face in her hands, choking back an involuntary sob. Fyfe crossed the room at a bound, put his arms around her.
"Stella, Stella!" he cried sharply. "Don't be a fool."
"D—don't be cross, Jack," she whispered. "Please. I'm sorry. I simply can't help it. You don't understand."
"Oh, don't I?" he said savagely. "I understand too well; that's the devil of it. But I suppose that's a woman's way,—to feed her soul with illusions, and let the realities go hang. Look here."
He caught her by the shoulders and pulled her to her feet, facing him. There was a fire in his eye, a hard shutting together of his lips that frightened her a little.
"Look here," he said roughly. "Take a brace, Stella. Do you realize what sort of a state of mind you're drifting into? You married me under more or less compulsion,—compulsion of circumstances,—and gradually you're beginning to get dissatisfied, to pity yourself. You'll precipitate things you maybe don't dream of now, if you keep on. Damn it, I didn't create the circumstances. I only showed you a way out. You took it. It satisfied you for a while; you can't deny it did. But it doesn't any more. You're nursing a lot of illusions, Stella, that are going to make your life full of misery."
"I'm not," she sobbed. "It's because I haven't any illusions that—that—Oh, what's the use of talking, Jack? I'm not complaining. I don't even know what gave me this black mood, just now. I suppose that queer miracle of my voice coming back upset me. I feel—well, as if I were a different person, somehow; as if I had forfeited any right to have it. Oh, it's silly, you'll say. But it's there. I can't help my feeling—or my lack of it."