"No," he said inly; "I must wrench myself from the very memory of that haunting face,--the friend and pupil of Madame de Grantmesnil, the associate of Gustave Rameau, the rival of Julie Caumartin, the aspirant to that pure atmosphere of art in which there are no vulgar connubial prejudices! Could I--whether I be rich or poor--see in her the ideal of an English wife? As it is--as it is--with this mystery which oppresses me, which, till solved, leaves my own career insoluble,--as it is, how fortunate that I did not find her alone; did not utter the words that would fain have leaped from my heart; did not say, 'I may not be the rich man I seem, but in that case I shall be yet more ambitious, because struggle and labour are the sinews of ambition! Should I be rich, will you adorn my station? Should I be poor, will you enrich poverty with your smile? And can you, in either case, forego--really, painlessly forego, as you led me to hope--the pride in your own art?' My ambition were killed did I marry an actress, a singer. Better that than the hungerer after excitements which are never allayed, the struggler in a career which admits of no retirement,--the woman to whom marriage is no goal, who remains to the last the property of the public, and glories to dwell in a house of glass into which every bystander has a right to peer. Is this the ideal of an Englishman's wife and home? No, no!--woe is me, no!"