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“Oh, I don’t know!” she murmured, pale and troubled. “I can’t change all at once. I have given my promise. It’s a sort of sacred thing with me now.”

“No, no! What does it matter if you have given a dozen promises? Listen to your own heart—and to mine.”

“I must not give up my work—indeed I must not; and I know you could not bear me to sing in public———”

“No, that I certainly could not. You must choose now between us, once for all. I could not have a wife who belonged to the public first. It may be a prejudice, but that is my idea.”

“Oh, you don’t know—you don’t understand. It is so hard to explain. I must go on—I must work. Don’t you remember that Balzac says that the artist must work with the energy of a miner buried under a landslip,” she added, trying to smile, and to bring the conversation down to an everyday level again.

“Well, that’s just what I don’t want to see you doing. You ought to let somebody else do the landslip business for you. You are making a great mistake. There is something better than even an artistic career—you may bet your life on that,” he added, quite unconsciously