“I cannot describe them well. But music calls me; I hear it trilling, and sobbing, and whispering everywhere; and sometimes it is so loud and so beautiful that I wonder why every one else doesn't stop to listen. They never do. So I sing back my answer. It is silent singing. You would only wonder why I was so quiet all at once.”
“But I have heard you sing.”
“Not with my real voice, Robert. It is stronger than it used to be.” She checked herself and hesitated, stopped by a sudden scruple—a sort of delicacy. She thought nothing at all of her beauty and never of her fortune; but in giving Robert her voice, and the nameless ambitions which enveloped it, she was conscious that she had made, in some way, a renunciation.
“Say what you were going to say, dearest?”
“I cannot forget,” she exclaimed desperately, “that mama was an actress. And I remember some of the nights at the theatre.... I liked the theatre.... I believe I could act.... I have learned the whole of Phédre and the whole of Juliet. That is why I live.”
This avowal of her secret over-ruling instinct set free the sanguine strength which circumstances had imprisoned, but could not destroy, in her character. The constant effort of hiding from all observation the irrepressible yearnings of a talent that would not be denied, had given her that quality of mysteriousness, of dreamy habits of thought, of languor, which, even to Robert, had looked as though she might find this earth too rough to live on. But the despair which comes from fighting, unsuccessfully, the world, is not that appearance of weakness which is the result of fighting—more or less effectively—one's own energy. In this latter issue the beaten foe joins forces obediently enough with the conqueror, till at last the opposing elements are directed, whether for good or evil, by one will.
“So you want to go on the stage,” said Orange quietly.
She turned to him and saw, with anguish, the deep amazement his words had not expressed.
“No,” she said, “no. I have you instead. I want to devote myself to you—to exist for you.”