“That is beautiful,” said Martin. “But, my word, fancy being able to become music. And suppose one happened to become a song by Gounod. Only that isn’t music,” he added. Stella felt somehow suddenly chilled. “Promise me I shan’t become a song by Gounod,” she said. Martin looked at her in silence a moment. She had risen rather abruptly from her position and was again sitting upright on the arm of his chair. “And what do I become?” he asked. “What do you make of me? It is thou, remember.” Something that for the last three days had hung mist-like in Stella’s mind suddenly congealed, crystallised, became definite. “I don’t want you to become anything,” she said. “But I want you to Be. I want you to be entirely yourself. I want you to get below your own surface, to dive into yourself, to find pearls. And then to let me wear them.” “You mean I am shallow?” “No, dear, I mean nothing of the kind. But, oh, Martin, don’t misunderstand me. All you have got from life, all you have gained, all you are you treat as fuel--you have said it--to burn in the furnace of your one passion--music.” Martin admitted this with a reservation. “That was true,” he said, “till just a week ago.” Stella rose from her place; sitting close to him, like that, she could not say what she meant to say. Personal magnetism, her love for that beautiful face, prevented her. So she went to the hearth-rug, under pretence of poking the fire, and stood there with her back to it, facing him. Then she spoke more quickly, with a certain vibration in her voice. “And this last week,” she said, “a new and wonderful piece of music was discovered by you. Yes, I put myself as high as that. But am I more than that? Am I really?” Martin’s forehead wrinkled slightly. Had it not been Stella who asked him this he would have said the question was unreasonable. But before he could reply she went on. “Ah, dearest,” she said. “I asked you just now to absorb me, to make me you. But I will not flow out of your finger-tips. Oh, I know you only said that in jest, but in jest sometimes one strikes very near to truth. Have you thought what you are to me, and what, if I am anything, I must be to you. Something absolutely indispensable, your life, no less. Now, supposing chords and harmonies were dumb to you forever, what would be left of you? Tell me that.” Martin’s expression grew puzzled. It was as if she asked him some preposterous riddle without answer. How could he compare the two? “How can I tell?” he said. “I suppose I should somehow and sometime adjust myself to it, though I haven’t the slightest idea how. I can’t imagine life, consciousness, without them.” “And if I went out of your life?” she asked, unwisely, but longing for some convincing answer. In reply Martin got up and went close to her.