His silence was assent.
``But I have the voice?''
``You have the voice.''
``An unusual voice?''
``Yes, but not so unusual as might be thought.As a matter of fact, there are thousands of fine voices.
The trouble is in reliability.Only a few are reliable.''
She nodded slowly and thoughtfully.``I begin to understand what Mr.Keith meant,'' she said.``Ibegin to see what I have to do, and how--how impossible it is.''
``By no means,'' declared Jennings.``If I did not think otherwise, I'd not be giving my time to you.''
She looked at him gravely.His eyes shifted, then returned defiantly, aggressively.She said:
``You can't help me to what I want.So this is my last lesson--for the present.I may come back some day--when I am ready for what you have to give.''
``You are going to give up?''
``Oh, no--oh, dear me, no,'' replied she.``I realize that you're laughing in your sleeve as I say so, because you think I'll never get anywhere.But you--and Mr.Keith--may be mistaken.'' She drew from her muff a piece of music--the ``Batti Batti,'' from ``Don Giovanni.'' ``If you please,'' said she, ``we'll spend the rest of my time in going over this.I want to be able to sing it as well as possible.''
He looked searchingly at her.``If you wish,'' said he.``But I doubt if you'll be able to sing at all.''
``On the contrary, my cold's entirely gone,'' replied she.``I had an exciting evening, I doctored myself before I went to bed, and three or four times in the night.
I found, this morning, that I could sing.''
And it was so.Never had she sung better.``Like a true artist!'' he declared with an enthusiasm that had a foundation of sincerity.``You know, Miss Stevens, you came very near to having that rarest of all gifts--a naturally placed voice.If you hadn't had singing teachers as a girl to make you self-conscious and to teach you wrong, you'd have been a wonder.''
``I may get it back,'' said Mildred.
``That never happens,'' replied he.``But I can almost do it.''
He coached her for half an hour straight ahead, sending the next pupil into the adjoining room--an unprecedented transgression of routine.He showed her for the first time what a teacher he could be, when he wished.There was an astonishing difference between her first singing of the song and her sixth and last--for they went through it carefully five times.She thanked him and then put out her hand, saying:
``This is a long good-by.''
``To-morrow,'' replied he, ignoring her hand.
``No.My money is all gone.Besides, I have no time for amateur trifling.''
``Your lessons are paid for until the end of the month.This is only the nineteenth.''
``Then you are so much in.'' Again she put out her hand.
He took it.``You owe me an explanation.''
She smiled mockingly.``As a friend of mine says, don't ask questions to which you already know the answer.''
And she departed, the smile still on her charming face, but the new seriousness beneath it.As she had anticipated, she found Stanley Baird waiting for her in the drawing-room of the apartment.Being by habit much interested in his own emotions and not at all in the emotions of others, he saw only the healthful radiance the sharp October air had put into her cheeks and eyes.Certainly, to look at Mildred Gower was to get no impression of lack of health and strength.Her glance wavered a little at sight of him, then the expression of firmness came back.
``You look like that picture you gave me a long time ago,'' said he.``Do you remember it?''
She did not.
``It has a--different expression,'' he went on.``Idon't think I'd have noticed it but for Keith.I happened to show it to him one day, and he stared at it in that way he has--you know?''
``Yes, I know,'' said Mildred.She was seeing those uncanny, brilliant, penetrating eyes, in such startling contrast to the calm, lifeless coloring and classic chiseling of features.
``And after a while he said, `So, THAT'S Miss Stevens!' And I asked him what he meant, and he took one of your later photos and put the two side by side.
To my notion the later was a lot the more attractive, for the face was rounder and softer and didn't have a certain kind of--well, hardness, as if you had a will and could ride rough shod.Not that you look so frightfully unattractive.''
``I remember the picture,'' interrupted Mildred.``It was taken when I was twenty--just after an illness.''
``The face WAS thin,'' said Stanley.``Keith called it a `give away.' ''
``I'd like to see it,'' said Mildred.
``I'll try to find it.But I'm afraid I can't.Ihaven't seen it since I showed it to Keith, and when Ihunted for it the other day, it didn't turn up.I've changed valets several times in the last six months--''
But Mildred had ceased listening.Keith had seen the picture, had called it a ``give away,'' had been interested in it--and the picture had disappeared.She laughed at her own folly, yet she was glad Stanley had given her this chance to make up a silly day-dream.
She waited until he had exhausted himself on the subject of valets, their drunkenness, their thievish habits, their incompetence, then she said:
``I took my last lesson from Jennings to-day.''
``What's the matter? Do you want to change?
You didn't say anything about it? Isn't he good?''
``Good enough.But I've discovered that my voice isn't reliable, and unless one has a reliable voice there's no chance for a grand-opera career--or for comic opera, either.''
Stanley was straightway all agitation and protest.
``Who put that notion in your head? There's nothing in it, Mildred.Jennings is crazy about your voice, and he knows.''
``Jennings is after the money,'' replied Mildred.
``What I'm saying is the truth.Stanley, our beautiful dream of a career has winked out.''
His expression was most revealing.
``And,'' she went on, ``I'm not going to take any more of your money--and, of course, I'll pay back what I've borrowed when I can''--she smiled--``which may not be very soon.''
