“Suddenly, I went to New York. Almost immediately I began to attend a public school—a free school, not a public school in your sense. Later I had tutors, masters. I learned well from the first. My intellect, that is to say my interest in books, awakened early—novels, at first, of course; gradually heavier works. In them I soon learned to forget; that is to say, I found in them a separate and particular happiness. I made a special study of the language and the literature of Germany. Whence I inherit my tendencies and talents I have no idea. From nowhere, most likely. Some mysterious disarrangement of particles, of which science, so far, knows nothing. You are an exotic yourself, or I am much mistaken. To return—that rushing of the awakened mind over dam after dam, barrier after barrier,—there is nothing under heaven like it, except the discovery that one was born to be a great artist, which, of course, is the supreme happiness. There were times, even then, when I was as happy as I ever shall be; that is to say, my mental exaltation was as great, for I suppose that is what mortal happiness really means, what gives us our most precise distinction from the lower order of animals, and makes us feel our relationship to that omnipotent force which we personify as God. At all events it was a life apart, a secret life, a life in which no one—no one—” her voice rose on an accent almost furious—“could enter. And of course those years of study played their part in making me what I am to-day. Most singers have no brain, no mental life; they must be taught their rôles like parrots, they put on a simulation of art with their costumes which deceives the great stupid public and touches no one. Mere emotionalism, animal robustness, they call temperament. I strengthened and developed my brain during those terrible years to such an extent that I now act out of it, think myself into every part, relying not at all upon the instructions of the uninspired, nor upon chance.”
Ordham had forgotten his dessert and was staring at her, fascinated, almost bewildered. Again she had lifted a corner of the veil. If she would but fling it aside! And pity overwhelmed him, for he saw far behind her words. But his face betrayed little of his emotions, and when she paused abruptly, he said: “You have an object in telling me this. What is it?”
