"
Diana was furious with herself for failing at the critical moment, and
even more angry at Baroni's speech, in which she sensed a suggestion of
the tolerance extended to the average drawing-room singer of mediocre
powers.
"I don't want to have a _pretty_ voice!" she broke out, passionately. "I
wouldn't say thank you for it."
And anger having swallowed up her nervousness, she opened her mouth--and
her throat with it this time?--and let out the full powers that were
hidden within her nice big larynx.
When she ceased, Baroni closed the open pages of the song, and turning on
his stool, regarded her for a moment in silence.
"No," he said at last, dispassionately. "It is certainly not a pree-ty
voice."
To Diana's ears there was such a tone of indifference, such an air of
utter finality about the brief speech, that she felt she would have been
eternally grateful now could she only have passed the low standard
demanded by the possession of even a merely "pretty" voice.
"So this is the voice you bring me to cultivate?" continued the
_maestro_. "This that sounds like the rumblings of a subterranean
earthquake? Boom! boo-o-om! Like that, _nicht wahr_?"
Diana crimsoned, and, feeling her knees giving way beneath her, sank into
the nearest chair, while Baroni continued to stare at her.
"Then--then you cannot take me as a pupil?" she said faintly.
Apparently he did not hear her, for he asked abruptly:--
"Are you prepared to give up everything--everything in the world for art?
She is no easy task-mistress, remember! She will want a great deal of
your time, and she will rob you of your pleasures, and for her sake you
will haf to take care of your body--to guard your physical health--as
though it were the most precious thing on earth.
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