Nothing which was worthy her.
Such baser ardours as a creature who is young and beautiful can always awaken in the breast of any man, and a pitying and gentle tenderness which would be, offered to love, the cruellest of tortures.
And then she owed everything on earth to him: she was his debtor for the very bread she ate. That one fact seemed to him to stand between her and himself like a white wall made of ivory by hands divine. That she herself did not know the extent of her debt to him made it the more sacred to him.
Circumstance being then as it was between them, and powerless as he was to feel for her anything more than the tenderness and the pity which she had from the first aroused in him, what title had he to stand between her and any possible triumphs and consolations which the world might offer to her? None, he thought. None that any generosity could allow him to claim.
He said aloud to Rosselin:
'Whatever you think best to do for her, do. Her career will be your creation. If she ever attains greatness she will owe it to you. I do not think that I have any right to interfere either one way or the other. To interest my wife in what she has forgotten is impossible. You might as well try to gather last year's raindrops. But it is possible that she might be pleased if her predictions were proved to her to have been accurate. Contrive for her to see your pupil before she hears of her. She may perhaps recognise her with interest. I dare not say that she will. But you can make the experiment.'
'It will be difficult,' said Rosselin.
'Not very. You have before now done me the honour to arrange dramatic representations at my house. Whenever the Countess Othmar next wishes for entertainment of that kind, which she is sure to do before long, I will place the arrangements for it in your hands. You can then bring forward Damaris Bérarde in any piece you choose. What you wish will so be done. She will be seen and heard under my roof; and, if successful, she may—possibly—reconquer a place in my wife's memory. If she fail she will certainly never do so.'
'She will not fail,' said Rosselin; whilst he thought to himself, 'She will not fail, because she will have the stimulant of your wife's presence and the memory of your wife's disdain. She will not fail if I have left in me any of the magnetism which I used to be able to communicate to others.'
Rosselin was a man of warm feelings and keen sympathies, but the artist in him dominated the friend. He was so saturated with the love of art that, as he had surrendered all his own existence to its claims, so he unhesitatingly surrendered that of others. The kindest of natures wherever there was no question of art, he almost became cruel where the interests of art were involved. To Othmar, the life of a girl seemed too tender and poetic a thing to be given over to the imperious exactions of any art; but to Rosselin, though he had at first been unwilling to draw her into its sphere, he became, the moment that he believed he saw genius in her, willing even to hurt her, if by such a hurt such genius could be stung or scourged into any ampler evidence of its own powers. He thought little of what she might or might not suffer if he brought her into the presence of the women who represented destiny to her. All he considered was, that no other spectator would be so likely to move her, to goad her into the fullest revelations of the resources of her talent. With the future consequences of such a meeting he had nothing to do, all he thought of was its influence on his pupil. He knew that the wife of Othmar had a fascination for her as strong as hatred, and irresistible as magnetism. It was an electric force which he could not afford to allow to lie latent in the desire he felt, a desire which had grown stronger on him with every week that he had paid his visits to Les Hameaux, to compel Damaris into the seizure of that fame which had at first seemed to him a burden too great, a passion too fierce, for this young daughter of the sun and of the sea.