'If he would break her heart and rouse her hatred how much art would gain,' he thought. 'She would pass through the fire like Goethe's dancing girl, and come out of it immortal.'
He knew the weakness of love, and he knew the strength of genius.
'Listen to me,' he said, as the wood-fire gleamed and murmured. 'You dream too much of Othmar. I understand he was your saviour; he is your hero, your saint, your god: all that is inevitable; and he is a man whom women will always love, because he has a great grace and gentleness about him, and his discontent and sadness are in picturesque contrast with his magnificent and enviable fortunes. But he will never love you, my child: just because he has so loved that woman, that his heart has grown cloyed, yet cold; great passions always leave that kind of satiety behind them. And then the world holds him, a hundred thousand invisible threads bind him; if he had the heart left for it, which he has not, he would not have the time to turn back; his life is fixed, such as it is, and he and the world are wedded together, though it may not be the spouse he would have chosen. Do not either live for him or die for him. What will she say if you do either? That you are a love-sick fool. I do not talk to you as moralists would talk, because I do not believe in conventional morality; it is an absurdity, like all conventional things. No doubt your old friend Melville would speak much better than I do, but I speak honestly, and according to my lights. You have wished, and the wish has seemed to me natural, to compel recognition of your own powers from the person who first caused you to leave the happy obscurity of your life. You have said that you wish her to see you can have a greatness she has not. It is a personal motive, and art is best served by impersonal motives. Still it seems to me natural. I can understand it. But to do this you must be strong, you must be bold, you must be true to yourself. You must not be overcome because you see her looking like the great lady she is. There is only one thing which the wife of Othmar respects, it is genius; she respects that because her intellect appreciates, and her gold cannot buy, it. Prove to her that it is in you, and she will respect you. If you died for her lord to-morrow, she would only say that you had forgotten you were not upon the stage. I seem to speak harshly and roughly. Ah, my dear, my heart is neither; but I wish to save you from your own heart if I can. You are all alone, and you are scarcely more than a child, and the world, the world, is a beast.'
She did not answer; her head was bent down on her arms, and her face was hidden; all he could see was the hot flush on the ivory of her throat, and the curling hair which was made golden by the ruddy light from the leaping flames.
All her dreams and aspirations and ambitions seemed all huddled together, bruised and colourless, like a heap of child's toys broken and faded.
'She would not care!' that was all she thought. If the world were to give her fame, what would the best that she could ever reach seem to the unreachable disdain of that other woman? No more than the gleam of a glow-worm may seem to the planet on high.
A rude sun-browned wench of the sea and the land, good to row through blue water, and mow down green billows of grass: that was all she would ever seem to Othmar's wife.
'Tell me what you wish,' she said in a low tone. 'If I can I will do it.'