"An eccentricity, when I was just being simply myself, doing what I was meant to do, what I could do, drawing my inspiration not from the fashions of the moment but from the subjects, the words, the thoughts, which found their way into my soul. I didn't care whether they had found their way into other people's souls. What did that matter to me? Other people were not my concern. I didn't think about them. I didn't care what they cared for, only what I cared for. I was myself, just that. And from to-night I'm going to be just that, just simply myself again. It's the only chance for an artist." He paused, fixing his eyes upon her till she was forced to lift her eyes to his. "And I believe—I believe in my soul it's the only chance for a man."
He stood looking into her eyes. Then he repeated:
"The only chance for a man."
He went back slowly to the piano, grasped it, held it once more.
"Charmian," he said, "you've done your best. You've drawn me into the world, into the great current of life; you've played upon the surface ambition that I suppose there is in almost every man; you've given me a host of acquaintances; you've turned me from the one or two things that I fancied I might make something of since we married, The Hound of Heaven, the violin concerto. On the other side of the account you found me that song, and Lake to sing it. And you got me Gillier's libretto and opened the doors of Crayford's opera-house to me. You've devoted yourself to me. I know that. You've given up the life you loved in London, your friends, your parties, and consecrated yourself to the life of the opera. You've done your best. You've stuck to it. You've done all that you, or any other woman with your views and desires, could do for me in art. You've unmade me. I've been weak and contemptible enough to let you unmake me. From to-night I've got to build on ruins. Perhaps you'll say that's impossible. It isn't. I mean to do it. I'm going to do it. But I've got to build in freedom."
His eyes shone as he said the last words. They were suddenly the eyes not of a man crushed but of a man released.
She felt a pang of deadly cold at her heart.
"In—freedom?" she almost whispered.
She had believed that the failure of all her hopes, the failure before the world of which she no longer dared to cherish any lingering doubt, had completely overwhelmed her.
In this moment she knew it had not been so, for abruptly she saw a void opening in her life, under her feet, as it were. And she knew that till this moment even in the midst of ruin she had been standing on firm ground.