She had the triple beauty of youth, of health, of genius. There was the lavish glory of the springtime in her, as in the April fields when nature flings down flowers at every step. She should have been Heliodora to be crowned with white violets and blue hyacinths by the singer of Gadara, and he—if he had loved her, he might have opened his arms to her; but he looked in his own soul and no love of any kind was there.
Should he dare to offer her pale pity, mere tenderness, the fatigue of passions tired and chilled by another? What more unfair than for one weary and world-worn to lay his head upon the warm white breast of youth when he no more could dream there any of the dreams youth loves and love begets?
Damaris was perplexed and pained because he stayed so brief a time with her, for the low winter sun, already when he came so near to its last hour above the grey and purple of the plains, was still sinking red and dim in a western sky of smoke-like vapour, when he rose to leave her and return to Paris. She vaguely felt that there was some reserve between them, that all he thought was not expressed, that all he desired was not said.
In her ignorance of the waywardness and contradictions of the hearts of men, she could only think that he was angered with her for her persistency in a career which he had told her was not a happy or a wise one. To her it seemed that he had every right over her life, since without him she must have perished miserably amongst the unnoticed misery of the great city in which he had found her.
'You are not vexed that I was reciting the speeches of Dona Sol?' she asked him timidly, trying to find out what he wished.
'Vexed? Surely not,' he answered her. 'I understand that you still cling to this one thought, and since the ambition of it is so strong in you, it is no doubt best that you should give it an undivided devotion. We do nothing well that we do half-heartedly.'
'Does he tell you what he thinks of me?' she asked, still timidly.
'Rosselin?' said Othmar. 'Yes; he thinks greatly of your natural gifts; you content him, which is a rare thing, for he is hard to please; he believes you may move that dull, stupid, imitative mass which calls itself the world. I have never heard him say otherwise or say less. But neither Rosselin or I are gods, my child; we can push open the gates for you, but we cannot control what you may find beyond the gates.'
'You mean——?'
'I mean that his experience and influence will enable you to face the world with every advantage, will enable you to begin where others only arrive after long years of toil and of probation: but when he has done that he will have done all that he can do. The rest will lie with all the blind forces which govern human fates.'