“That is beautiful,” said Martin. “But, my word, fancy being able to become music. And suppose one happened to become a song by Gounod. Only that isn’t music,” he added.
Stella felt somehow suddenly chilled.
“Promise me I shan’t become a song by Gounod,” she said.
Martin looked at her in silence a moment. She had risen rather abruptly from her position and was again sitting upright on the arm of his chair.
“And what do I become?” he asked. “What do you make of me? It is thou, remember.”
Something that for the last three days had hung mist-like in Stella’s mind suddenly congealed, crystallised, became definite.
“I don’t want you to become anything,” she said. “But I want you to Be. I want you to be entirely yourself. I want you to get below your own surface, to dive into yourself, to find pearls. And then to let me wear them.”
“You mean I am shallow?”
“No, dear, I mean nothing of the kind. But, oh, Martin, don’t misunderstand me. All you have got from life, all you have gained, all you are you treat as fuel—you have said it—to burn in the furnace of your one passion—music.”
Martin admitted this with a reservation.