``I have been making a fool of myself.I'll not come again until I am all right.Be patient with me.Idon't think this will occur again.'' She first wrote ``happen.'' She scratched it out and put ``occur'' in its place.Not that Moldini would have noted the slip;simply that she would not permit herself the satisfaction of the false and self-excusing ``happen.'' It had not been a ``happen.'' It had been a deliberate folly, a lapse to the Mildred she had buried the day she sent Donald Keith away.When the note was on its way, she threw out all her medicines, and broke the new spraying apparatus Hicks had instructed her to buy.
She went back to the Rivi regime.A week passed, and she was little better.Two weeks, and she began to mend.But it was six weeks before the last traces of her folly disappeared.Moldini said not a word, gave no sign.Once more her life went on in uneventful, unbroken routine--diet, exercise, singing--singing, exercise, diet--no distractions except an occasional visit to the opera with Moldini, and she was hating opera now.All her enthusiasm was gone.She simply worked doggedly, drudged, slaved.
When the days began to grow warm, Mrs.Belloc said:
``I suppose you'll soon be off to the country? Are you going to visit Mrs.Brindley?''
``No,'' said Mildred.
``Then come with me.''
``Thank you, but I can't do it.''
``But you've got to rest somewhere.''
``Rest?'' said Mildred.``Why should I rest?''
Mrs.Belloc started to protest, then abruptly changed.``Come to think of it, why should you?
You're in perfect health, and it'll be time enough to rest when you `get there.' ''
``I'm tired through and through,'' said Mildred, ``but it isn't the kind of tired that could be rested except by throwing up this frightful nightmare of a career.''
``And you can't do that.''
``I won't,'' said Mildred, her lips compressed and her eyes narrowed.
She and Moldini--and fat, funny little Mrs.Moldini --went to the mountains.And she worked on.She would listen to none of the suggestions about the dangers of keeping too steadily at it, about working oneself into a state of staleness, about the imperative demands of the artistic temperament for rest, change, variety.``It may be so,'' she said to Mrs.Brindley.
``But I've gone mad.I can no more drop this routine than--than you could take it up and keep to it for a week.''
``I'll admit I couldn't,'' said Cyrilla.``And Mildred, you're making a mistake.''
``Then I'll have to suffer for it.I must do what seems best to me.''
``But I'm sure you're wrong.I never knew anyone to act as you're acting.Everyone rests and freshens up.''
Mildred lost patience, almost lost her temper.
``You're trying to tempt me to ruin myself,'' she said.
``Please stop it.You say you never knew anyone to do as I'm doing.Very well.But how many girls have you known who have succeeded?''
Cyrilla hesitatingly confessed that she had known none.
``Yet you've known scores who've tried.''
``But they didn't fail because they didn't work enough.
Many of them worked too much.''
Mildred laughed.``How do you know why they failed?'' said she.``You haven't thought about it as I have.You haven't LIVED it.Cyrilla, I served my apprenticeship at listening to nonsense about careers.
I want to have nothing to do with inspiration, and artistic temperament, and spontaneous genius, and all the rest of the lies.Moldini and I know what we are about.So I'm living as those who have succeeded lived and not as those who have failed.''
Cyrilla was silenced, but not convinced.The amazing improvement in Mildred's health, the splendid slim strength and suppleness of her body, the new and stable glories of her voice--all these she knew about, but they did not convince her.She believed in work, in hard work, but to her work meant the music itself.She felt that the Rivi system and the dirty, obscure little Moldini between them were destroying Mildred by destroying all ``temperament'' in her.
It was the old, old criticism of talent upon genius.
Genius has always won in its own time and generation all the world except talent.To talent contemporaneous genius, genius seen at its patient, plodding toil, seems coarse and obvious and lacking altogether in inspiration.Talent cannot comprehend that creation is necessarily in travail and in all manner of unloveliness.
Mildred toiled on like a slave under the lash, and Moldini and the Rivi system were her twin relentless drivers.She learned to rule herself with an iron hand.
She discovered the full measure of her own deficiencies, and she determined to make herself a competent lyric soprano, perhaps something of a dramatic soprano.
She dismissed from her mind all the ``high'' thoughts, all the dreams wherewith the little people, even the little people who achieve a certain success, beguile the tedium of their journey along the hard road.She was not working to ``interpret the thought of the great master'' or to ``advance the singing art yet higher'' oreven to win fame and applause.She had one object --to earn her living on the grand opera stage, and to earn it as a prima donna because that meant the best living.She frankly told Cyrilla that this was her object, when Cyrilla forced her one day to talk about her aims.Cyrilla looked pained, broke a melancholy silence to say:
``I know you don't mean that.You are too intelligent.You sing too well.''
``Yes, I mean just that,'' said Mildred.``A living.''
``At any rate, don't say it.You give such a false impression.''
``To whom? Not to Crossley, and not to Moldini, and why should I care what any others think? They are not paying my expenses.And regardless of what they think now, they'll be at my feet if I succeed, and they'll put me under theirs if I don't.''
``How hard you have grown,'' cried Cyrilla.
``How sensible, you mean.I've merely stopped being a self-deceiver and a sentimentalist.''
``Believe me, my dear, you are sacrificing your character to your ambition.''
``I never had any real character until ambition came,''
