'At all events,' she concluded, 'you won't have to do it on the real

night.' They were in the larger room again. But for the decided damage done to

her sleeve by her tears, Madame Bonanni had restored her outward

appearance tolerably well. She stood at the corner of the piano,

resting one hand upon it.

'I'm sorry for you, my dear,' she said cheerfully, because I've given

you so much trouble, but I'm glad I cried as much as I wanted to. It's

horribly bad for the voice and complexion, but nothing really refreshes

one so much. I felt as if my heart were going to break when I got

here.' 'And now?' Margaret smiled, standing beside the elderly woman and idly

turning over the music on the desk of the instrument.

'I suppose it has broken,' Madame Bonanni answered. 'At all events, I

don't feel it any more. No--really--I don't! He may go to Peru, if he

likes--I hope he will, the ungrateful little beast! I'll never think of

him again! When you have made your début, I'm going to live in the

country. There's plenty to do there! Bonanni shall milk cows again and

hoe the furrows between the vines this summer! Bonanni shall go back to

Provence and be an old peasant woman, where she was once a peasant

girl, and married the English painter. Do you think I've forgotten the

language, or the songs?' One instant's pause, and the singer's great voice broke out in the

small room with a volume of sound so tremendous that it seemed as if it

would rend the walls and the ceiling. It was an ancient Provençal song

that she sang, in long-drawn cadences with strange falls and wild

intervals, the natural music of an ancient, gifted people. It was very

short, for she only sang one stanza of it, and in less than a minute it

was finished and she was silent again. But her big dark eyes, still

swollen and bloodshot, were looking out to a distance far beyond the

green trees she saw through the open window.

Margaret, who had listened, repeated the wild melody very softly, and

sounded each note of it without the words, as if she wished to remember

it always; and a nearer sight came back to the elder woman's eyes as

she listened to the true notes that never faltered, and were as pure as

sounding silver, and as smooth as velvet and as rich as gold. It was a

little thing, but one of those little things that only a born great

singer could have done faultlessly at the first attempt; and Madame

Bonanni listened with rare delight. Then she laughed, as happily as if

she had no heartaches in the world.




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