Longacre was vaguely dismayed. He had not known that Julia sang. He abhorred drawing-room songs, built to show the voice as a stage gown to show the figure. At the worst, he felt he could not forgive her. At the best, it must be less beautiful than she. And that _he_ should second such a performance! He felt he had changed color. He said he would be delighted. So far, he rose to her conventional ideal. It would not, he felt, have been so bad had they two been alone together; but all these people coming in, murmuring, looking expectant, made a show of it, in which he seemed, to himself, exhibiting Julia, at her worst, to—well, Florence Essington at her best. He fancied the girl’s cheeks were hot, her hands nervous as they skimmed the music.
The song she chose was some selection from a modern Italian opera, a passionate, melancholy thing.
All through the long prelude he found himself expecting and dreading her voice.
When it came at last it bewildered him. It was everything he had not expected, liquid, pliant, full, unerringly true in its leaps and falls through alarming intervals, astonishingly trained. But it chilled him, distressed him, so much more disappointed him than he had feared. It failed in the one thing he had made sure of. The voice was a lovely, hollow shell of sound. Could not a creature with her strong pulse of life, her gorgeous senses, put more of herself, of her passion, into her voice? His accompaniment sang the composer’s meaning with keener comprehension than she, he thought savagely as his fingers fell on the last chord.
But the approval, the banalities, the applause, were all for the singer. They must have it again, Mrs. Budd’s guests.
But Julia, looking covertly at Longacre, whose approval alone was withheld, refused brusquely. No, she told Mrs. Fitz Hugh, the most voluble of the group around her, she would not sing again to-night. She looked laughing and triumphant, standing separated from him by the people.
He felt irritated, out of tune with everything. The evening that had promised so well was spoiled. But as he turned from the piano Julia was suddenly at his elbow, still flushed, but now her voice was weak in her murmur.
It was hard to meet her eyes, yet he experienced a swift pleasure, as if one in whom he had feared to be disappointed had not failed him, after all.