When the echo of their horses' feet had ceased from the stones of the courtyard, and the quiet air had no sound in it except the twitter of the sparrows pecking among the food of the poultry in the yard below, Damaris remained motionless, leaning against the wall of the chamber. One by one all the words which had been spoken to her returned on her memory, bringing with them a clearer meaning, a fuller comprehension, a deeper disgust.

Little by little she understood all which Blanche de Laon had meant, all which she had promised, all which she had supposed.

'They think that I live on his money, and that all I care for is that,' she muttered with the sick sense of a loathsome imputation stealing all the strength out of her nerves, and all the peace out of her life.

Othmar to her was as a deity. But the very exaltation and intensity and ideality of the passion which moved her for him, rendered all the coarse suggestions and conclusions of this woman of fashion most intolerable to her, most cruel, and most degrading. Because she would have followed him to any fate with joy and with devotion, therefore was she most tortured, most outraged, by the supposition that she could regard him as the means to riches and to fame. Nothing on earth suffers so intensely as a loyal and lofty passion, which sees itself classed with venal and avaricious lusts.

Perhaps even he himself might suspect her of some such vile hopes as these!

She leaned against the wall, sick at heart in her utter solitude, her lips white, her brow red with dusky colour, her breathing slow and loud, her limbs cold. The white dogs watched her with wistful eyes as they had once watched her little boat go away over the moonlit sea. The morning crept onward, the pale sunbeams strayed across the floor, amorous pigeons cooed in their little homes under the eaves, distant voices of labourers, calling one to another, came through the stillness; there was the sound of the strokes of an axe in the copse.

She was conscious of nothing.

An hour and more passed uncounted by her, when the step of Rosselin, still so firm and so light, mounted rapidly the wooden stairs and his voice called gaily to her before he had reached the door of her chamber.

'My child, where are you? I have great news for you. You had no expectation of a visit from me to-day. I have great news for you, my dear; it would not brook delays; the Fates have sent us the very chance we wanted, there is always a dea Fortuna for genius, the very stars fight in their courses for it——'

His gay and excited voice dropped suddenly, for his eyes caught sight of her leaning against the wall of the room, where she had stood during the last words spoken by Blanche de Laon. She turned her head and looked at him, but without much recognition in the look, her face was suffused with dark colour, she had an expression in her eyes, stunned, disgusted, bewildered, and yet one of intense anger.

'Who has been with you?' said Rosselin, abruptly. 'What have they done to you?'

She did not reply.

Rosselin repeated his question impatiently.

'Have you not trust enough in me to speak? You look as if you had seen ghosts. Good God! what has happened to you? Child, cannot you answer me?'

'There is nothing to say,' she replied slowly. Not for the universe could she have repeated what she had heard.

'Nothing to say! and you have lost faith in me in a night! I left you as usual yesterday. You have been graver, shyer, stiller of late it is true, but you have never been like this. I came to tell you of a great chance. There may be no more gods for the vulgar, for aught I know, but there is a divine providence still for genius! Mdlle. Reichenberg is ill from cold; she was to play in the great theatricals at AmyÔt. Louis Loswa, who directs them as he always does, has just sent to me to suggest that you should take her place in two scenes from the "Misanthrope." He says that Othmar suggested it; that he wishes his wife to see you there. You are letter perfect, I say, in the part of CÉlimÈne, you have recited it so many times with me. True you have never played on any stage, but I am not afraid of you if you will be courageous, if you will speak as you speak when we are alone. Child, you have genius. What is the use of having it if you are dumb as the stocks and stones? Why do you look so? What has happened to you since I left you?'

Damaris stared at him with dilated eyes.

'AmyÔt!' she repeated.

'Yes, AmyÔt,' said Rosselin angrily. 'The great country house of Othmar. It is what I always most desired. It will be the finest dÉbut you can have, and will, perhaps, stay evil tongues. You have said that you would be dumb if you stood before her, but that pusillanimity is wholly unworthy of you. What is she to you! A woman who once predicted fame for you. Show her that she predicted aright. You can succeed if you choose. Succeed then, to do honour to me and justice to yourself——'

She did not reply.

'Cannot you trust me to know what is best for you?' said Rosselin, still with anger and upbraiding. 'I have arranged everything. You will go down to Beaugency to-night with me; rest one day, rehearse twice or thrice there, and on the next play the part at AmyÔt. It will be perfectly easy. You are neither weak nor nervous, though you are impressionable and take strange loves and hatreds. All is arranged; I have your costumes ordered; the people who will act with you are all my friends, and will aid you in every way. God in heaven! What can you hesitate for? What can you want? At your age had I had such an opportunity to take my place at a bound on the highest steps of French art I should have gone mad with joy!'

Damaris was silent. Her face was in shadow and he could not see its expression.

'Does he wish it, you say?' she asked in a low voice.

'Othmar? Yes, I believe so. He gave his permission for such a presentation of you to his wife months ago; he will be present, and he will certainly be glad to see your triumph. He knows well that there is no other life possible for you. You cannot go back to the life you left; you will not be content with the paths of obscurity; you have touched the enchanted cup and you must go on to drink of it, whether you will or no. There are a score of reasons, which it is not necessary to detail, why it is much to be desired that you should be seen first at AmyÔt, beyond all other places. I think you should trust me. I am not likely to mislead you after having passed so many months in striving to develop the talents Nature has given you. Your natural gifts are great; if you do not throw them away in a passion of mistaken feelings or of childish despair you may live to reign in France as a woman of genius can reign in no other country in the world. You make me angry to see you so—Othmar's wife! What is Othmar's wife to you that you should fret your soul for her? What matter to you, child, are your own gifts, your own future, your own victory? Love Art and follow it. It will be more faithful to you than any lover that lives!'

She still did not reply.

He grew impatient and indignant with her. He had the conviction which is so sincere in a great artist, that all passions, affections, joys, woes and desires, loves and hatreds, were of no weight whatever put in the scale with Art and with renown. He had given up his whole existence to Art, and now that he was old his devotion to it had remained in him whilst he had forgotten the force and the despair of the affections and of the passions when they govern the early years of life.

It seemed to him intolerable, incredible, that the mere weight and sway of Othmar's memory should stand for a moment in the same scale with her as her destiny in the world, her place in fame. As a youth he himself had swept away all the flowers of feeling whenever they had threatened to choke the growing laurel of his genius: why could she not do the same? Was it because she was weak with the weakness of women?

After love there is nothing so cruel as the tyrannies of art, and Rosselin was art incarnated. Moreover he believed in the magnetism and vivifying force of unexpected events and of sudden emotions. They were a portion of those drastic and searching medicines with which he thought an imperfectly developed genius needs treatment. Once he had wished and wished sincerely that Damaris BÉrarde should remain in the cool and shady paths of private life; but he had long ceased to wish it; he was impatient for the world to crown the novitiate on which he had bestowed so much care and labour.

The thought of the fÊtes at AmyÔt captivated and stimulated his own imagination. They seemed to him the occasion she most needed; a very frame of Renaissance carvings, in which the portrait of CÉlimÈne as portrayed by Damaris would show in its finest colours and its finest lines. He dreaded for her the coarse and ugly trivialities of a theatre with its throng of actors, its imperious direction, its hired applause, its niggard criticisms; he feared that she would feel in it like a hind caught in the toils, would rebel against it all and flee. But at AmyÔt it would be pure art which would claim her, refined praise which would salute her, an atmosphere of delicacy, of culture, of magnificence which would be about her. If such a scene and such a stimulant would not arouse all the soul slumbering in her, then he thought that he would be ready to confess: 'I mistake; she has no genius; let her go and till the earth and reap its fruits; of the fruits of art she shall have none.'

If she failed in such an air with such an opportunity, he thought that he could be as cruel to her as Garcia was to Malibran when her Desdemona was too timid and too tame.

'I want you to be seen at AmyÔt,' he said once more, with irritation at being forced to explain. 'Othmar's friendship for you is only an injury unless you have his wife's countenance too. You can feel for her what aversion you will, but you must be seen by the world in her presence: then she can do you no harm. You are too ignorant and too young to see the perils in your path, but I see them. I will save you from them if you will be guided by me. If you are afraid to act, if you are unwilling to be with the others, they must find some other substitute for Reichenberg; there are many eager enough to replace her; and you yourself shall only say some legend in verse, some monologue, some simple poem, the "RÉvolte des Fleurs" or the "Vase et l'Oiseau;" anything will do; you will be heard, you will be seen, you will be known to have recited on the stage at AmyÔt; it will suffice.'

He did not add that he expected so much from the charm of her voice and from the beauty of her face that the slightest cause which should afford a reason for her being seen by the great world would, in his anticipations, suffice to give her a place in its admiration, and rank in its realms of Art.

'Come,' he said imperiously, 'there is little time to lose. We must reach Beaugency to-morrow in the forenoon. All the rest are already there. You must rehearse with them thrice at the least, for you have none of the habits of the stage, though I think they will come to you easily; I have taught you all there really is to know. Come: why do you stand like that? Have you been moon-struck or sun-struck since I saw you the day before yesterday? You have an opportunity given you for which you should go on your knees with thanksgiving, and you look as though you were doomed to your death! Oh, child, what did I tell you the other day? If the hate of this woman be in your soul, let it spur you on to great efforts, let it move you to high endeavours, let it force her to own that you are dowered by nature with what she has not. Hate is an ignoble thing, and I do not think it the parent of noble actions, but if you cannot cast it out of your breast, compel it to inspire you nobly. You have wished for the world's applause, for the solace of art, for the joys of moving the minds of multitudes: all these may become yours, if you choose. But not if you consume your soul in vain passions.'

The face of Damaris grew duskily red. She knew his meaning.

'I cannot play at AmyÔt,' she said slowly. 'Do not ask me, I cannot. I should disgrace you. My tongue would cleave to my mouth. You would curse me.'

'Great God!' cried Rosselin, furious and amazed. 'Because that one woman has such terror for you?'

'Not that,' said Damaris.

She was mute some moments, the blue veins swelled in her throat, a mist of tears gathered hastily in her eyes.

'I was starving and he fed me, I was friendless and he befriended me. He shall not think that I look on his kindness as a mere stairway to climb by to fame and the ways of the world. His wife and his friends shall not say that I am made by his gold and sustained by his influence; a mere thing of selfish, covetous, ambitious, mercenary greed—like so many, many women—so they say. I did not understand; now I have thought—and I do understand. You are angry and I must seem thankless. But I will never go upon the stage—never—never—never—because his wife and his world, and perhaps his own thoughts, would always tell him that all I cared for was the help he could give me, the reflection his wealth could cast on me. I never saw it like that before, but now that I have seen it so, once, I cannot go back into blindness.'

The tears rolled slowly from her eyes down the burning crimson of her cheeks; her voice was lost in one great sob. Rosselin seized her arm with a violent gesture.

'Who has been with you?' he said, fiercely. 'Who has dared to spit on you the venom of the world's lying mouth?'

'I have thought it out all myself. Before I did not know,' she answered briefly, and more than that he could not force from her.

She could not have told him the temptations and the suggestions made by Blanche de Laon to save her life. All their shamefulness had burnt into her very soul, as vitriol burns the flesh.

He stayed with her till night had fallen, and urged, implored, commanded, persuaded, entreated her, with all the might of that golden speech of which he was master. But it was all in vain. The rocks of her own island were not more deeply rooted in their deep-sea bed, than was her immovable purpose—never to try and force her way into the world's publicity.

'Do you mean to say,' he asked, with incredulity and despair, 'that you give up all idea of a dramatic career?'

She made a sign of assent.

'You cannot know what you do,' he cried in amazement and indignation. 'You have gifts which are not given to many. Do you mean to say that you will let all these lie and rust because of some sentimental fancy which has rooted itself against all reason in your mind? Your objections are absurd. They are the morbid, exaggerated feelings of a child who has lived too much alone, and knows nothing of the world except what books can tell. What has Othmar to do with it either way? If it be a sacrifice made for him he will not care for it. He has been kind to you; he is kind to half a million people; but your future is nothing to him, except as he wishes you well, assuredly he wishes you well, and the more success and happiness you gain the less remorse will he feel that he and his broke up your life in the south. Oh, my child, my dear, be wise while it is time. The world is all before you, do not take a false step on its very threshold. The gods are seldom benevolent; if we refuse the good that they would do us, they leave us alone ever afterwards. They will never return to ingrates.'

She was silent; but by the look upon her face he saw that he had not altered her resolve.

'I seem to speak harshly no doubt,' he pursued, 'for you cannot see in my heart, and for the first time since I have known you, you refuse to believe in my judgment. I tell you that your idea is absurd, that Othmar will never attribute to you the motives you fancy; he is too wise and too generous, and no one could look at you, child, and think of you an ignoble thing. You may be a great artist if you choose. If you are not that, you will be of all creatures the most wretched, for you will live against all the instincts of your nature, against all the bend of your mind. What made you, when you read your poets on your island, dream of a life wholly unknown to you, if not the forces of genius which made you dissatisfied where you were, and cried to you "Go." Fate has been kind to you: it has set open the door; it has left you free. If you are thankless and refuse what it offers, you will deserve to perish in misery.'

She was still quite silent.

'But what will become of you?' he cried in his amazement and his grief. 'Child, you are so young, you cannot pass all your life living down all the vital powers that are in you. Genius struggles like a child in the womb to force its way out to light. You cannot go against your nature. What will you do? What will you do? We have made you for ever unfit for the existence to which you were born. If you do not go and sit where Fame beckons you now, you will stay out in the cold, friendless and homeless for life. Have I not told you so before? There is nothing on earth so wretched as the genius which is born to speak, yet fettered by circumstance, stands dumb.'

She heard, but she remained unmoved. She was but a child, and she had a great hopeless passion shut in her heart, and the vileness of the world had touched her like the saliva of an unclean beast, and what could the fame which such a world could give seem ever worth to her? All the youth and the warmth, and the awaking senses and the wasted tenderness in her all yearned for gentler, simpler, tenderer things, than the glittering corselet of fame and the noisy applause of a crowd. Rosselin was so used to being all alone himself so many a year, that he could not measure the loneliness of a girl who has no mother to weep with her, no sister to laugh with her, no lover to kiss the dewy roses of her lips. He forgot that when he spoke to her of fame and of art, all her young life called out in her, 'Ah—where is love?'

He stayed until late in the evening, bringing to bear on her all the arguments and all the persuasions of which his fertile memory and eloquent tongue could arm him; but he failed to pierce the secret of the change in her, and he abandoned in despair the effort to form her steps to AmyÔt. He left her in anger and in reproach in the soft vapours of a sweet night of early spring, fragrant with the scent of opening fruit blossoms and of violets growing under the low dark clouds of rain. He was alarmed, afraid, and full of impotent anger and of unsatisfied wonder.

'Who has been with her? What has she heard?' he asked himself in vain, as he walked through the cold shadowy sweet-scented fields. His own heart was heavy with anxiety and disappointment. She was the last ambition of his life. For her his own youth, his own genius had seemed to live afresh, and ally themselves with the awaking forces of a coming time.

What some men feel in their children's promise he felt in hers.

He recognised in her the existence of great gifts, of uncommon powers, which would move the minds and the hearts of nations. That such things should be wrecked because the mere common useless sorrow of a human love held her soul captive and made her mouth dumb, seemed to the great artist the cruellest irony of fate, the crowning anomaly of all gods' grim jests.

Was Love ever, he thought bitterly, any better thing than the satire of success, the curse of genius, the ruin of imagination and of art?