"Feel my hands," said Kaya, "Is that fever?" Then she shut her eyes. She heard clumsy footsteps descending the stairs, and then a pause; and after a moment or two steps coming back, but they were firm and quick, and her heart kept time to them.
"What did I say in my ravings?" she cried to herself, "What did he hear?"
"I see now what hurt you," said Kaya, without raising her eyes, "You thought I wanted to repay your kindness that can never be repaid; that I was narrow and little, and was too proud to take from your hands what you gave me. Forgive me."
The Kapellmeister crossed the room and sat down on the chair that the nurse had left. He said nothing, and Kaya felt through her closed lids that he was looking at her. "How shall I ask him?" she was saying to herself, "How shall I put it into words when perhaps he understood nothing after all?"
"If you think your voice is there," said the Kapellmeister, "fresh, and not too strained for the high notes, why you can try it now. If it goes all right, I daresay we could announce 'Siegfried' for the end of the week."
"Will you give me the note?" said Kaya, "Is it F#, or G, I forget?"
"I will hum you the preceding bars where Siegfried first hears the bird." Ritter began softly, half speaking, half singing the words in his deep voice, taking the tenor notes falsetto. "Now--on the F#. The bird must be heard far away in the branches, and you must move your head so--as it flutters from leaf to leaf."
Kaya lifted herself from the pillows until she sat upright, supporting herself with one hand. She began to sing, and then she stopped and gave a cry. "It is there!" she said pitifully, "I feel it, but it won't come!--I can't make it come! It is as if there were a gate in my throat and it was barred!"
Tears sprang to her eyes. She opened her lips farther, but the sound that came was strange and muffled; and she listened to it as if it were some changeling given to her by a mischievous demon in exchange for her own.
"That isn't my voice," she said, "You know as well as I--it never sounded like that before! What is it? Tell me--"
The Kapellmeister laughed a little, mockingly: "I told you, child," he said, "I warned you. Don't look like that! When you are stronger, it will come with a burst, and be bigger and fresher than ever before. Siegfried must wait for his bird, that is all."