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You haf a pree-ty face; if your voice is as pree-ty as your face you need not haf fear." 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.
"On condition that you won't go in for any more hysterics, I'll go and settle with the Manager that you don't have to appear to-night. It's lucky there happens to be a new turn with those trapeze people. The audience won't miss you. Has Sobrenski given you anything to do to-day?" "I don't know. I can't remember. Oh, yes, I was to go to the Baroni's at two o'clock." "I'll see to that.
But Baroni's words fell upon stony ground, and Max and Diana went their way, absorbed in one another and in the wonderful happiness which love had brought them. Thus spring slipped away into summer, and the season was in full swing when fate tossed the first pebble into their unruffled pool of joy.
You will drink a glass of champagne now, at once," he insisted, adding persuasively as she shook her head, "To please me, is it not so?" Diana's lips curved in a tired smile. "Is champagne the cure for a heartache, then, Maestro?" Baroni's eyes grew suddenly sad. "Ah, my dear, only death or a great love can heal the wound that lies in the heart," he answered gently.
A vision rose up before Diana of what life would be denuded of the glamour and excitement, the perpetual triumphs, the thrilling sense of power her singing gave her the dull, flat monotony of it, and she caught her breath sharply in instinctive recoil. "No," she admitted slowly. "I couldn't give it up now." An odd look of satisfaction overspread Baroni's face. "Then do not blame me, my child.
Almost Baroni's very words! Max winced. "No. I don't know how it will end, as you say. But surely there will come a time when I shall be free to live my own life?" Adrienne smiled a trifle wistfully. "If your conscience ever lets you," she said. There was a long silence. Presently she resumed:
Her breakfast was standing untouched on the table beside her bed. She regarded it distastefully. Then, recalling with a wry smile Baroni's dictum that "good food, and plenty of good food, means voice," she reluctantly began to eat, idly turning over the while the pages of one of the newspapers which Milling had placed beside the breakfast tray.
Absorbed in the music, neither master nor pupil had observed that during the course of the song the door had been softly unlatched from outside and held ajar, and now, just as Diana was somewhat blushingly extricating herself from Baroni's fervent clasp, it was thrown open and the unseen listener came into the room.
Then she saw Olga Lermontof mounting the platform steps preparatory to accompanying Kirolski's solo, and with a sudden violent reaction from her calm composure she realised that the following item on the programme must be the first group of her own songs. For an instant the room swayed round her, then with a little gasp she clutched Baroni's arm. "I can't do it! . . . I can't do it!"
"You threw it there, and you can pick it up. I'm going home." And, turning her back upon him, she marched towards the door. A sudden twinkle showed itself in Baroni's eyes. With unaccustomed celerity he pranced after her. "Come back, little Pepper-pot, come back, then, and we will continue the lesson." Diana turned and stood hesitating.
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