the wild desire of liberty were
the imperious passions of her heart--more vehement than any other
feeling--even her love for Orange.

"I could fight," she said, "a visible devil, but this struggle with
moods and tastes is deadening."

"What are the moods and tastes?" he asked.

"I cannot describe them well. But music calls me; I hear it trilling,
and sobbing, and whispering everywhere; and sometimes it is so loud and
so beautiful that I wonder why every one else doesn't stop to listen.
They never do. So I sing back my answer. It is silent singing. You would
only wonder why I was so quiet all at once."

"But I have heard you sing."

"Not with my real voice, Robert. It is stronger than it used to be."
She checked herself and hesitated, stopped by a sudden scruple--a sort
of delicacy. She thought nothing at all of her beauty and never of her
fortune; but in giving Robert her voice, and the nameless ambitions
which enveloped it, she was conscious that she had made, in some way, a
renunciation.

"Say what you were going to say, dearest?"

"I cannot forget," she exclaimed desperately, "that mama was an actress.
And I remember some of the nights at the theatre.... I liked the
theatre.... I believe I could act.... I have learned the whole of
_Phedre_ and the whole of _Juliet_. That is why I live."

This avowal of her secret over-ruling instinct set free the sanguine
strength which circumstances had imprisoned, but could not destroy, in
her character. The constant effort of hiding from all observation the
irrepressible yearnings of a talent that would not be denied, had given
her that quality of mysteriousness, of dreamy habits of thought, of
languor, which, even to Robert, had looked as though she might find this
earth too rough to live on. But the despair which comes from fighting,
unsuccessfully, the world, is not that appearance of weakness which is
the result of fighting--more or less effectively--one's own energy. In
this latter issue the beaten foe joins forces obediently enough with the
conqueror, till at last the opposing elements are directed, whether for
good or evil, by one will.

"So you want to go on the stage," said Orange quietly.

She turned to him and saw, with anguish, the deep amazement his words
had not expressed.

"No," she said, "no. I have you instead. I want to devote myself to
you--to exist for you."

"Oh, don't you see, my dear child, that this is a kind of--of pity--of
anything you lik