"Unless what?" breathed Sheila.
"Will you let me advise you?"
"Oh, if you only will! What shall I do?" And Sheila bent trusting, obedient eyes upon her.
"Do? Dear child, I can tell you in a word. You must renounce!"
"Renounce?" repeated Sheila vaguely.
"Yes, renounce!" And Alice North turned a face of pale sacrifice upon her—with that inevitable instinct for the dramatic. Few women had renounced less than she—less, at least, of what pleased them—but at that moment, in the intensity of her artistic fervor, she believed herself an ascetic for her work's sake.
"The common lot of womanhood is not for you," she declared. "You must live for your art!" And her voice trembled with the touching earnestness that she had so easily assumed—and would as easily cast off.
To Sheila, however, there never came a doubt of Mrs. North's deep sincerity. She had listened, as if to a priestess, while the novelist proclaimed her sublime creed of renunciation, and she now offered the obstacle to it in her own situation with a sense of having fallen from grace in being thus human:
"But I'm married, you know."
"And so am I. But I am consecrated, nevertheless, to my art. And so, my dear, must you be. You must give yourself utterly,—utterly—to your art! Art won't take less. Your husband must live for you—instead of your living for him after the fashion of most wives. And you'll be worth his living for—I'm sure of that."