“Not exactly: but I was fond of acting. I have acted; you saw me, if you remember—you saw me here in charades, and as Hermione,” said Gwendolen, really fearing that Klesmer had forgotten.
“Yes, yes,” he answered quickly, “I remember—I remember perfectly,” and again walked to the other end of the room. It was difficult for him to refrain from this kind of movement when he was in any argument either audible or silent.
Gwendolen felt that she was being weighed. The delay was unpleasant. But she did not yet conceive that the scale could dip on the wrong side, and it seemed to her only graceful to say, “I shall be very much obliged to you for taking the trouble to give me your advice, whatever it maybe.”
“Miss Harleth,” said Klesmer, turning toward her and speaking with a slight increase of accent, “I will veil nothing from you in this matter. I should reckon myself guilty if I put a false visage on things—made them too black or too white. The gods have a curse for him who willingly tells another the wrong road. And if I misled one who is so young, so beautiful—who, I trust, will find her happiness along the right road, I should regard myself as a—Bösewicht.” In the last word Klesmer’s voice had dropped to a loud whisper.
Gwendolen felt a sinking of heart under this unexpected solemnity, and kept a sort of fascinated gaze on Klesmer’s face, as he went on.
“You are a beautiful young lady—you have been brought up in ease—you have done what you would—you have not said to yourself, ‘I must know this exactly,’ ‘I must understand this exactly,’ ‘I must do this exactly,’”—in uttering these three terrible musts, Klesmer lifted up three long fingers in succession. “In sum, you have not been called upon to be anything but a charming young lady, whom it is an impoliteness to find fault with.”
He paused an instant; then resting his fingers on his hips again, and thrusting out his powerful chin, he said,
“Well, then, with that preparation, you wish to try the life of an artist; you wish to try a life of arduous, unceasing work, and—uncertain praise. Your praise would have to be earned, like your bread; and both would come slowly, scantily—what do I say?—they may hardly come at all.”
This tone of discouragement, which Klesmer had hoped might suffice without anything more unpleasant, roused some resistance in Gwendolen. With a slight turn of her head away from him, and an air of pique, she said,
“I thought that you, being an artist, would consider the life one of the most honorable and delightful. And if I can do nothing better?—I suppose I can put up with the same risks as other people do.”