In the same way, to be a singer doesn't mean to
sing after dinner or to go squawking anyhow in a workhouse, but it means
to get up on a platform before critical people, and if you don't do your
very best be damned by them. If I marry Michael I must go on singing
as a professional singer, and not become an amateur--the Viscountess
Comber, who sings so charmingly. I refuse to sing charmingly; I will
either sing properly or not at all. And I couldn't not sing. I shall
have to continue being Miss Falbe, so to speak."
"You say you insist on it," said Hermann; "but whether you did or not,
there is nothing more certain than that Michael would."
"I am sure he would. But by so doing he would certainly quarrel
irrevocably with his people. Even Aunt Barbara, who, after all, is very
liberally minded, sees that. They can none of them, not even she, who
are born to a certain tradition imagine that there are other traditions
quite as stiff-necked. Michael, it is true, was born to one tradition,
but he has got the other, as he has shown very clearly by refusing to
disobey it. He will certainly, as you say, insist on my endorsing the
resolution he has made for himself. What it comes to is this, that I
can't marry him without his father's complete consent to all that I have
told you.
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