``I want him to know,'' said Mildred. ``And he
wants to know.''
``I refuse to be drawn into it,'' Cyrilla said, and
disappeared.
But Mildred saw that Stanley had been shaken. She
proceeded to explain to him at length what a singer's
career meant--the hardships, the drafts on health and
strength, the absolute necessity of being reliable, of
singing true, of not disappointing audiences--what
a delicate throat meant--how delicate her throat was
--how deficient she was in the kind of physical strength
needed--muscular power with endurance back of it.
When she finished he understood.
``I'd always thought of it as an art,'' he said
ruefully. ``Why, it's mostly health and muscles and
things that have nothing to do with music.'' He was
dazed and offended by this uncovering of the mechanism
of the art--by the discovery of the coarse and painful
toil, the grossly physical basis, of what had seemed
to him all idealism. He had been full of the delusions
of spontaneity and inspiration, like all laymen, and all
artists, too, except those of the higher ranks--those
who have fought their way up to the heights and, so,
have learned that one does not achieve them by being
caught up to them gloriously in a fiery cloud, but by
doggedly and dirtily and sweatily toiling over every inch
of the cruel climb.
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