"Robert V. has heard me."
"Well, I don't pretend to be a judge of music, but considering your youth and looks and when I see the kind of thing that does get across—"
"I know. I used to feel that way about it, too—hot, rebellious—but, somehow, not any more. Strange that it should have taken my child to show me. I realized it last winter when I heard Eames. I simply hadn't it to give, except in desire. Why, her voice—it seemed to climb up around an invisible spiral staircase to the stars; and that wasn't all! There was something so richly colored through it—like the candy stripe through a crystal. I know now—and I'm glad I know—that my ambition was bigger than my talent."
"I suppose that is what you thought about me, too, when you read my sketch."
"No, no. I admit I did think it amateurish, but there is an idea in 'The Web.' Almost as if you had lived it yourself and had written it in blood. Besides, you know the secret of concentration; it shows in your work at the office. I couldn't stick night after night over one of those trial balances of yours. I'd throw it over. I've never in my life really worked for anything. Even as a child I used to cheat myself—move the clock; hadn't that sublime capacity for grind. That was part of the lack. How clear it all seems now!"
"The cruelest clarity in the world is wisdom after the event."
"Oh, but I wouldn't have one thing different! It simply wasn't in me to want badly enough, and therefore I didn't attain. But I know—I know, Mrs. Blair, that there is a logic running somewhere through it all. Nothing has been in vain. I'm out on a highroad now with open running ahead. I'm going to rear her into a superwoman. She is my song, Zoe! There is logic, I tell you, Mrs. Blair—straight through the apparent mix-up. Off somewhere in Corsica a vine is putting down roots that there may be wine in somebody's glass some day. The vine. The grape. The wine."
"The vine. The grape. The wine."
"Don't you understand now a little better, Mrs. Blair, why this poor little fermenting grape couldn't stay on the vine?"
"You've told me so little, dear."