"No. You are right. Still, your fall-down as a singer is the important fact. Don't lose sight of it."

"I shan't," said she tersely.

His eyes were frankly laughing. "As to Ransdell--what a clever trick!

He's a remarkable man. If he weren't so shrewd in those little ways, he might have been a great man. Same old story--just a little too smart, and so always doing the little thing and missing the big thing.

Yes, he went gunning for you--and got you." He dropped into his chair.

He thought a moment, laughed aloud, went on: "No doubt he has worked that same trick many a time. I've suspected it once or twice, but this time he fooled me. He got you, Miss Gower, and I can do nothing. You must see that I can't look after details. And I can't give up as invaluable a man as Ransdell. If I put you back, he'd put you out--would make the piece fail rather than let you succeed."

Mildred was gazing somberly at the floor.

"It's hard lines--devilish hard lines," he went on sympathetically.

"But what can I do?"

"What can I do?" said Mildred.

"Do as all people do who succeed--meet the conditions."

"I'm not prepared to go as far as that, at least not yet," said she with bitter sarcasm. "Perhaps when I'm actually starving and in rags--"

"A very distressing future," interrupted Crossley. "But--I didn't make the world. Don't berate me. Be sensible--and be honest, Miss Gower, and tell me--how could I possibly protect you and continue to give successful shows? If you can suggest any feasible way, I'll take it."

"No, there isn't any way," replied she, rising to go.

He rose to escort her to the hall door. "Personally, the Ransdell sort of thing is--distasteful to me. Perhaps if I were not so busy I might be forced by my own giddy misconduct to take less high ground. I've observed that the best that can be said for human nature at its best is that it is as well behaved as its real temptations permit. He was making you, you know. You've admitted it."

"There's no doubt about that," said Mildred.

"Mind you, I'm not excusing him. I'm simply explaining him. If your voice had been all right--if you could have stood to any degree the test he put you to, the test of standing alone--you'd have defeated him. He wouldn't have dared go on. He's too shrewd to think a real talent can be beaten."

The strong lines, the latent character, in Mildred's face were so strongly in evidence that looking at her then no one would have thought of her beauty or even of her s.e.x, but only of the force that resists all and overcomes all. "Yes--the voice," said she. "The voice."

"If it's ever reliable, come to see me. Until then--" He put out his hand. When she gave him hers, he held it in a way that gave her no impulse to draw back. "You know the conditions of success now. You must prepare to meet them. If you put yourself at the mercy of the Ransdells--or any other of the petty intriguers that beset every avenue of success--you must take the consequences, you must conciliate them as best you can. If you don't wish to be at their mercy, you must do your part."

She nodded. He released her hand, opened the hall door. He said:

"Forgive my little lecture. But I like you, and I can't help having hope of you." He smiled charmingly, his keen, inconstant eyes dimming.

"Perhaps I hope because you're young and extremely lovely and I am pitifully susceptible. You see, you'd better go. Every man's a Ransdell at heart where pretty women are concerned."

She did not leave the building. She went to the elevator and asked the boy where she could find Signor Moldini. His office was the big room on the third floor where voice candidates were usually tried out, three days in the week. At the moment he was engaged. Mildred, seated in the tiny anteroom, heard through the gla.s.s door a girl singing, or trying to sing. It was a distressing performance, and Mildred wondered that Moldini could be so tolerant as to hear her through. He came to the door with her, thanked her profusely, told her he would let her know whenever there was an opening "suited to your talents." As he observed Mildred, he was still sighing and shaking his head over the departed candidate.

"Ugly and ignorant!" he groaned. "Poor creature! Poor, poor creature.

She makes three dollars a week--in a factory owned by a great philanthropist. Three dollars a week. And she has no way to make a cent more. Miss Gower, they talk about the sad, naughty girls who sell themselves in the street to piece out their wages. But think, dear young lady, how infinitely better of they are than the ugly ones who can't piece out their wages."

There he looked directly at her for the first time. Before she could grasp the tragic sadness of his idea, he, with the mobility of candid and highly sensitized natures, shifted from melancholy to gay, for in looking at her he had caught only the charm of dress, of face, of arrangement of hair. "What a pleasure!" he exclaimed, bursting into smiles and seizing and kissing her gloved hands. "Voice like a bird, face like an angel--only not TOO good, no, not TOO good. But it is so rare--to look as one sings, to sing as one looks."

For once, compliment, sincere compliment from one whose opinion was worth while, gave Mildred pain. She burst out with her news: "Signor Moldini, I've lost my place in the company. My voice has gone back on me."

Usually Moldini abounded in the consideration of fine natures that have suffered deeply from lack of consideration. But he was so astounded that he could only stare stupidly at her, smoothing his long greasy hair with his thin brown hand.

"It's all my fault; I don't take care of myself," she went on. "I don't take care of my health. At least, I hope that's it."

"Hope!" he said, suddenly angry.

"Hope so, because if it isn't that, then I've no chance for a career,"

explained she.

He looked at her feet, pointed an uncannily long forefinger at them.

"The crossings and sidewalks are slush--and you, a singer, without overshoes! Lunacy! Lunacy!"

"I've never worn overshoes?" said Mildred apologetically.

"Don't tell me! I wish not to hear. It makes me--like madness here."

He struck his low sloping brow with his palm. "What vanity! That the feet may look well to the pa.s.sing stranger, no overshoes! Rheumatism, sore throat, colds, pneumonia. Is it not disgusting. If you were a man I should swear in all the languages I know--which are five, including Hungarian, and when one swears in Hungarian it is 'going some,' as you say in America. Yes, it is going quite some."

"I shall wear overshoes," said Mildred.

"And indigestion--you have that?"

"A little, I guess."

"Much--much, I tell you!" cried Moldini, shaking the long finger at her. "You Americans! You eat too fast and you eat too much. That is why you are always sick, and consulting the doctors who give the medicines that make worse, not better. Yes, you Americans are like children. You know nothing. Sing? Americans cannot sing until they learn that a stomach isn't a waste-basket, to toss everything into. You have been to that throat specialist, Hicks?"

"Ah, yes," said Mildred brightening. "He said there was nothing organically wrong."

"He is an a.s.s, and a criminal. He ruins throats. He likes to cut, and he likes to spray. He sprays those poisons that relieve colds and paralyze the throat and cords. Americans sing? It is to laugh! They have too many doctors; they take too many pills. Do you know what your national emblem should be? A dollar-sign--yes. But that for all nations. No, a pill--a pill, I tell you. You take pills?"

"Now and then," said Mildred, laughing. "I admit I have several kinds always on hand."

"You see!" cried he triumphantly. "No, it is not mere art that America needs, but more sense about eating--and to keep away from the doctors.

People full of pills, they cannot make poems and pictures, and write operas and sing them. Throw away those pills, dear young lady, I implore you."

"Signor Moldini, I've come to ask you to help me."

Instantly the Italian cleared his face of its half-humorous, half-querulous expression. In its place came a grave and courteous eagerness to serve her that was a pleasure, even if it was not altogether sincere. And Mildred could not believe it sincere. Why should he care what became of her, or be willing to put himself out for her?

"You told me one day that you had at one time taught singing,"

continued she.

"Until I was starved out?" replied he. "I told people the truth. If they could not sing I said so. If they sang badly I told them why, and it was always the upset stomach, the foolish food, and people will not take care about food. They will eat what they please, and they say eating is good for them, and that anyone who opposes them is a crank.

So most of my pupils left, except those I taught for nothing--and they did not heed me, and came to nothing."

"You showed me in ten minutes one day how to cure my worst fault. I've sung better, more naturally ever since."

"You could sing like the birds. You do--almost. You could be taught to sing as freely and sweetly and naturally as a flower gives perfume.

That is YOUR divine gift, young lady song as pure and fresh as a bird's song raining down through the leaves from the tree-top."

"I have no money. I've got to get it, and I shall get it," continued Mildred. "I want you to teach me--at any hour that you are free. And I want to know how much you will charge, so that I shall know how much to get."