"How did you come to sing in opera? Do not tell me if the recollection is unpleasant. I wondered then."
"Because after--after things went wrong, I could not take his money. I knew how to sing, and I loved it; but even there it was the same story of suspicion and jealousy, till it seemed to me that hate and fear ruled the world. I went to so many, many cities, but there was no city beautiful, and in all the country I found no Arcady. I had money then, it is true; but the jingle of the guinea doesn't help the artist who sings, or paints, or writes, or plays, because God has put it into his soul to do this thing; at least not after the very first, when it stands as a tangible assurance of success. The cities were 'cities of dreadful night,' and awful days; there were places that were not hives, but styes of human beings, fighting for what they called life, to die, never having lived. Sometimes I went into those jungles of civilization and sang to them. It was the only thing I could give them all. It was there I got my lesson. I had been singing 'All Tears,' when an old woman said in her feeble, trembling voice, 'Ye mun loe us, young leddy, to come to sic a place an' sing o' Him wha sa loed the warld that He sent His only begotten Son ta it, for it's only great loe that casts out fear, and this is a fearsome spot.' Since then I haven't hated anything, except wanton cruelty, and I know love rules when it is fearless, but that is very seldom. We were afraid to say, I love you, to anything more sensitive than a stray kitten, though the world has hungered and thirsted after the love we have feared to give even to our own children. And yet just the love a man and woman may bear each other, unconsciously, is enough to transform the earth. We have not been cross to each other; I do not believe we have spoken unkindly to anything this year."
He drew her into his arms. "Is it enough to regenerate the earth?"
"And keep it regenerated?" she echoed. "Do you know?"
"Do you remember telling me, long ago, of a story in which the woman said she had never seen but one man whose mother she would be willing to be? And you said you felt so about me? I was very proud of it then, but I am prouder of it now, since, feeling so, you cannot be unwilling to be the mother of my children. You are not, are you?"