Page:Dorothy Canfield - Rough-hewn.djvu/385

 many tears. But tears are valuable. You cannot live and be an artist, without tears. Shed them freely and you will see how you will grow."

She looked at her watch, "I expect Georges at five," she explained, and swept on to her peroration, "Remember, think of all I tell you when your wise old friend who knows life is far away. Remember! None of your Anglo-Saxon nonsense about trying to get along without sex-life. Take it, take all you need of it, but keep it separate from your real life as a man does, and it will never poison or embitter you." She laughed a little, triumphantly, "You will do all the embittering instead of enduring it. You have beauty. You can buy anything you want with it, if you learn how to use it. You have what will advance you more than any talent for music! You have a nice talent, but you will go ten times as far as a woman with a big nose and poor hair. Make your brain a little mint, my darling, coin your good looks into legal tender, and buy success."

She kissed the girl and dismissed her, with another look at her watch and then into the mirror.

Marise stumbled down the stairs, a little dizzied by the sudden removal of that pressing, urgent, magnetic personality. To step out suddenly from under it, was like stepping into a vacuum. Her ears rang.

At the street-door she paused, waiting for the mist to clear from before her eyes. She peered out into the quiet street, as if she were looking into life itself, the life that Madame de la Cueva had so magisterially set before her. And she loathed in anticipation everything that was waiting for her there.

There lay the world, grown-up life, Rome, her career, before her, and apparently there was nothing in it which she would not detest. Love … the love that Madame de la Cueva had shown her how to get … she shrank away from it with a proud, cold scorn, her nostrils quivering. Music … there was no music in that program, only an exploitation of music to buy personal success for her. And she loved music … fiercely she clung to that, as the one thing that would not betray her, the one thing she dared love with all her heart.