'He has been a very great artist, and speech is to him as the flute to the flute-player: an instrument with which he does what he will. Yes, you pleased him, my dear. He thinks that you have in you the soul of an artist, the future of one if you choose.'
'Ah!' she laughed aloud for sheer happiness and triumph, in the joy and the pride of a child. It seemed to her the most exquisite glad tidings, the most superb success.
'He will even help you; he will train you himself; and whoever is trained by David Rosselin is in a certain sense secure of the public ear,' said Othmar with a reluctance which he felt was unjust to her, for if she possessed this power why should she be denied the knowledge of it? 'But,' he added slowly, 'I must warn you that even he, great artist as he has been, thinks as I think—that it is better to mow grass in the fresh air than to seek the suffrage of crowds in the gaslight. He thinks as I think, that, for a woman, the more secluded and sheltered be the path of life the happier and the better is it for her. This sounds very cold and cautious to you, no doubt; but it would be what every man of the world would tell you, who was honest with you, and had your welfare at heart.'
Her face changed and clouded as she heard him.
'Why?' she said abruptly.
He was silent. It was impossible to tell this child, who was as innocent as any one of the poppies blowing in the grass, all the reasons which made the future she coveted look to him like the open mouth of a furnace into which a white sea-bird was flying in its ignorance.
'Private life is the best life,' he said as she repeated, a little imperiously, her 'why?' 'It is the calmest, the simplest, the most screened from envy and hatred. I suppose tranquillity does not seem to you the one inestimable blessing which it really is. You are full of ardours and enthusiasms and longings, as the vines are full of sap in the springtime. You want the wine of life, because you do not know that the intoxication of it is always coupled with nausea, and fever, and unspeakable disgust. It is of no use saying this to you, because you are so young; but it is true. If I could compel your future, I would have it pass yonder, where, far away, we see that golden haze. There are the great wheat-lands of La Beauce, and the thrift and the peace and the abundance of a rich pastoral life. If you spent your little fortune on a farm there, with your love of country sights and sounds and ways, you would be happy; and you could take your choice from the many gallant youths who reap the harvests of those plains. You would be a rich demoiselle in La Beauce, but in the world of art you may be poor, my dear, for all your gifts from nature. We are poor, very poor, forever, when once we have failed.'
His own words sounded in his ears unkind, unsympathetic, harsh, and almost coarse; but he spoke as, it seemed to him, both experience and conscience made it duty to do. Damaris looked down on the shorn grass at her feet, and he saw her face and throat grow red.
'If I had wished to marry I would have married my cousin,' she said with a sound of anger and offence in her voice. 'Peasant life is good, very good. Perhaps, if I had never seen anything different, it might have seemed always the best. But not now—not now——'