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Updated: September 22, 2025
If not, I beg of you, after five years have elapsed, to destroy the packet unread. I do not care to be more precise. Always yours, "Alresca." "That is all?" asked Rosa, when I had finished reading it. I passed her the letter to read for herself. Her hand shook as she returned it to me. And we both blushed. We were both confused, and each avoided the glance of the other.
"There is none like you," Alresca said, and the praise of Alresca brought the crimson to her cheek. He was probably the one person living who had the right to praise her, for an artist can only be properly estimated by his equals. "Come to me, Rosa," he murmured, as he took her hand in his and kissed it. "You are in exquisite voice to-night," he said. "Am I?" "Yes.
"I have not slept since that night," she murmured wearily. "Then you will not tell me?" "What have I to tell you, except that you are ill? Stop a moment. I have an item of news, after all. Poor Alresca has made me his heir." "That was like his kind heart." "Yes, indeed. But I can't imagine why he did it!" "It was just gratitude," said she. "A rare kind of gratitude," I replied.
"My poor Rosa," I heard Alresca begin. The girl had dropped to her knees by his side, and taken his hand. "How did it happen, Alresca? Tell me." "I cannot tell you! I saw saw something, and I fell, and caught my leg against some timber, and I don't remember any more." "Saw something? What did you see?" There was a silence. "Were you frightened?" Rosa continued softly. Then another silence.
Of course, the accident to and indisposition of Alresca had also contributed to this end. And there had been another factor in the case a factor which, by the way, constituted the sole item of news capable of rousing Alresca from his torpor. I refer to the disappearance of Sir Cyril Smart.
I stood at the great central window, which was wide open, and watched the whiteness of the swans moving vaguely over the surface of the canal in the oncoming twilight. The air was warm and heavy, and the long, high-pitched whine of the mosquito swarms sole pest of the city had already begun. "Alresca," I said, "your days as an invalid are numbered." "Why do you say that?"
Nay, I went further, and deliberately stated to them, with a false air of perfect candor, that there was no foundation of any sort for such an idea. Had not Alresca been indisposed for months? Had he not died from failure of the heart's action?
For as Rosa was among sopranos, so was Alresca among tenors the undisputed star. Without other aid Alresca could fill the opera-house; did he not receive two hundred and fifty pounds a night? To put him in the same cast as Rosa was one of Cyril Smart's lavish freaks of expense. As these two stood together Rosetta Rosa smiled at him; he gave her a timid glance and looked away.
Many times since then have I heard Rosa sing, many times in my hearing has she excited a vast audience to overwhelming enthusiasm; but never, to my mind, has she sung so finely as on that night. She was profoundly moved, she had in Alresca the ideal listener, and she sang with the magic power of a goddess. It was the summit of her career.
At the age of three, just as I was beginning to talk easily, I became, for a period, subject to fits; and in one of these I lost the power of speech. I, Alresca, could make no sound; and for seven years that tenor whom in the future people were to call 'golden-throated, and 'world-famous, and 'unrivalled, had no voice." He made a deprecatory gesture.
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