Chapter XXXVII

Her silence then was broken. “Well might I
Be proud to be thus yours. Who could not find
All meet for manhood, in your manliness?
But no, for you forget our different aims.
You never told me of these plans before.
And, Norman, now—no, no; for, through your church,
That fann’d some whim of his, left smouldering,
Some spark of doubt to ardent heresy,
My father suffer’d, lost his honor’d name,
His living, all; nor struggled, scrimpt, and starved
To leave his daughter ignorant of the cause.
And I?—no, no; it courses through my blood;
And you would hate my tastes, which cannot be
Like yours religious; no, for I was made
To be the minister of only art.”

“But, Edith,” urged I, “truth far more includes
Than most men deem who would deem all things theirs.—
Your tastes are not religious?—Mine are not,
If by religion you mean piety,—
Religion’s brew, froth’d bubbling to be seen.
But how is it beneath the surface, friend?
Down deep within?—is not the substance there?
I never seem’d religious half so much
As when at one with you.”
She but replied
To tell me how “her father’s legacy
Had been her sister, whom she must not leave.
For her sake, seeking means of livelihood,
She first rejected, then accepted what
Her spirit, spurning once, had learn’d to love;
As had her sister; and for both of them
Each hope, and joy, and all they thought of now,
Was bounded by the music of the stage.
Nor could my logic change this; nay,” she said,
“Not logic leads the artist on, but light.”