Daniel could scarcely believe his own eyes; it was like magic. Without saying a word he handed the letter to Eleanore. She read it, and looked at him quietly.
“Yes, I am guilty,” she said, “I stole the quartette.”
“Is that so? Do you realise, Eleanore, what you have done to me?”
Eleanore’s face coloured with surprise and fear.
“You ought to know; probably in the future you will lose interest in such womanish wiles.”
He walked back and forth, and then stepped up very close to her: “You probably think I am an idiotic simpleton, a dullard. You seem to feel that I am one of those rustic imbeciles, who has had his fingers frozen once, and spends his days thereafter sitting behind the stove, grunting and shaking every time anybody says weather to him. Well, you are wrong. There was a period when I felt more or less like that, but that time is no more.”
He started to walk back and forth again; again he stopped: “It is not because I think they are too good, nor is it because I am too inert or cowardly, that I keep my compositions under lock and key. I would have to have wheels in my head if I did not have sense enough to know that the effect of a piece is just as much a part of it as heat is a part of fire. Those people who claim that they can quite dispense with recognition and success are liars and that only. What I have created is no longer my property: it longs to reach the world; it is a part of the world; and I must give it to the world, provided, do you hear? provided it is a living thing.”
“Well then, Daniel,” said Eleanore, somewhat relieved.
“That is where the trouble lies,” he continued, as though he had never been interrupted, “it all depends on whether the piece has life, reality, the essence of true being in it. What is the use of feeding people with unripe or half-baked stuff? They have far too much of that already. There are too many who try and even can, but what they create lacks the evidence that high heaven insisted on its being created: there is no divine must about it. My imperfect creations would merely serve as so many stumbling blocks to my perfect ones. If a man has once been seduced by the public and its applause, so that he is satisfied with what is only half perfect, his ear grows deaf, his soul blind before he knows it, and he is the devil’s prey forever. It is an easy matter to make a false step, but there is no such thing as turning back with corrective pace. It cannot be done; for however numerous the possibilities may be, the actual deed is a one-time affair. And however fructifying encouragement from without may be, its effects are in the end murderous if it is allowed to drown out conscience. What I have created in all these years is good enough so far as it goes, but it is merely the preparatory drill to the really great work that is hovering before my mind. It is possible that I flatter myself; it may be that I am being cajoled by fraud and led on by visions; but it is in me, I feel certain of it, and it must come to light. Then we shall see what sort of creature it is. Then all my previous works will have ceased to exist; then I will bestir myself in a public way; I will come out and be the man that I really am. You can depend on it.”