There was something in the words, gently as they were spoken, which chilled her eager faiths and sanguine hopes, and brought back to her that fear of the future, that dread of the imprisonment of the art world, which had moved her after the recital of the Conservatoire.
'I begin to understand!' she said, with an impetuous sigh. 'It will be a slavery where I thought it a conquest. But—but—could not I have one triumph and then come back to the country and the quiet of it if I wished? Could I not make Paris crown me once, even if I gave the crown back to them? Why not?——'
'Because, drinking once, every one drinks as long as a drop is left of that amari aliquid called Fame. If you once taste triumph you will never return to obscurity. Did I not tell you so in the summer? Besides, why should you wish to triumph at all unless it be to give over your life to Art? I do not understand——'
The face of Damaris grew red and overcast.
'I want her to know that I need not be despised,' she said in a very low voice, through which there ran the thrill of a deep and sombre meaning. Othmar started and himself coloured at the menace which there was in the sound of her voice.
'You mean Nadège?' he said abruptly.
Damaris gave a gesture of assent.
She was ashamed of what she had said, but it had escaped her almost involuntarily. He was silent. He was uncertain what to say. There was a sense of reluctance in him to speak at all of his wife to her. Commonplace words could have been said in plenty; but these he did not choose to employ. He understood that the whole strong and ardent soul of this child was on her lips; it was not a time for trivial platitudes, for empty phrases, which in moments of great emotions seem more unkind than blows.
'If I be your friend, my dear, you must not think of her as your enemy,' he said at length. 'She admires genius—it is the one thing which commands her respect: if you show her you possess it she will be a better friend to you than I can ever be.'
'I do not want her friendship.'