It did not at first occur to him that Margaret had really changed since

he had met her, and not exactly in the way he might have wished.

Instead of showing any inclination to give up the stage, as he had

hoped that she might, she seemed more and more in love with her future

career.

When he had first met her he had made the acquaintance of a strikingly

good-looking English girl, born and brought up a lady, full of talent

and enthusiasm for her art, but as yet absolutely ignorant of

professional artistic life and still in a state of mind in which some

sides of it were sure to be disagreeable to her, if not absolutely

repulsive.

Hidden in his box, and watching her as well as listening to her, he

gradually realised the change, and he remembered many facts which

should have prepared him for it. He recollected, for instance, her

perfect coolness and self-possession with Madame Bonanni, so absolutely

different from the paralysing shyness, the visible fright and the

pitiful helplessness at the moment of trial, which he had more than

once seen in young girls who came to Madame Bonanni for advice. They

had good voices, too, those poor trembling candidates; many of them had

talent of a certain order; but it was not the real thing, there was not

the real strength behind it, there was not the absolute self-reliance

to steady it; above all, there was not the tremendous physical

organisation which every great singer possesses.

But Margaret had all that; in other words, she had every gift that

makes a first-rate professional on the stage, and as the life became

familiar to her, those gifts, suddenly called into play, exerted their

influence directly upon her character and manner. She was born to be a

professional artist, to face the public and make it applaud her, to

believe in her own talent, to help herself, to trust to her nerves and

to defend herself with cool courage in moments of danger.

This was assuredly not the girl with whom Logotheti had fallen in love

at first sight, whom he, as well as Lushington, had believed far too

refined and delicately brought up to be happy in the surroundings of a

stage life, and much too sensitive to bear such familiarity as being

addressed as 'Cordova,' without any prefix, by an Italian tenor singer

whose father had kept a butcher's shop in Turin.

No doubt, the refinement, the sensitiveness, the delicacy of manner

were all there still, for such things do not disappear out of a woman

in a few days; but they belonged chiefly to one side of a nature that

had two very distinct sides. There was the 'lady' side, and there was

the 'actress' side; and unfortunately, thought Logotheti, there was now

no longer the slightest doubt as to which was the stronger. Margaret

Donne was already a memory; the reality was 'Cordova,' who was going to

have a fabulous success and would soon be one of the most successful

lyric sopranos of her time.




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