am one of those rustic imbeciles, who has had his fingers frozen
once, and spends his days thereafter sitting behind the stove, grunting
and shaking every time anybody says weather to him. Well, you are wrong.
There was a period when I felt more or less like that, but that time is
no more."

He started to walk back and forth again; again he stopped: "It is not
because I think they are too good, nor is it because I am too inert or
cowardly, that I keep my compositions under lock and key. I would have
to have wheels in my head if I did not have sense enough to know that
the effect of a piece is just as much a part of it as heat is a part of
fire. Those people who claim that they can quite dispense with
recognition and success are liars and that only. What I have created is
no longer my property: it longs to reach the world; it is a part of the
world; and I must give it to the world, provided, do you hear?
_provided_ it is a living thing."

"Well then, Daniel," said Eleanore, somewhat relieved.

"That is where the trouble lies," he continued, as though he had never
been interrupted, "it all depends on whether the piece has life,
reality, the essence of true being in it. What is the use of feeding
people with unripe or half-baked stuff? They have far too much of that
already. There are too many who try and even can, but what they create
lacks the evidence that high heaven insisted on its being created: there
is no divine _must_ about it. My imperfect creations would merely serve
as so many stumbling blocks to my perfect ones. If a man has once been
seduced by the public and its applause, so that he is satisfied with
what is only half perfect, his ear grows deaf, his soul blind before he
knows it, and he is the devil's prey forever. It is an easy matter to
make a false step, but there is no such thing as turning back with
corrective pace. It cannot be done; for however numerous the
possibilities may be, the actual deed is a one-time affair. And however
fructifying encouragement from without may be, its effects are in the
end murderous if it is allowed to drown out conscience. What I have
created in all these years is good enough so far as it goes, but it is
merely the preparatory drill to the really great work that is hovering
before my mind. It is possible that I flatter myself; it may be that I
am being cajoled by fraud and led on by visions; but it is in me, I feel
certain of it, and it must come to light. Then we shall