Rosa came suddenly down from her tirade, perceiving how utterly it fell flat.
“My darling, I meant nothing to distress you. If you don’t understand me, never mind.”
“But,” she added, half to herself, “if you had the soul of an actress in you, you would.”
“Do you think, Rosa,” said Violante, after a pause, in low reflective accents, “that anyone could be coaxed to make friends?”
“Why, yes, I suppose so,” said Rosa, lightly. “You see it succeeded in the case of Masetto.”
“That is only a play,” said Violante, in a tone of contempt.
“Ah, well, Violante, real life certainly doesn’t work itself out quite like a play. But it was of plays we were talking, you know.”
“Yes. Rosa mia, I am not so silly but that I can tell the difference between my own acting and other people’s. It is not only that I am frightened—and unhappy—it is that I cannot do it. Do you think I could ever learn how?”
There was not a shade of pique or of mortified pride in the anxious, humble question, and Rosa could not help fancying that even in sweet Violante nothing but utter indifference and incapacity could have made failure so endurable.
“Well,” she said, “I don’t suppose you will ever make a great hand at it; but I should think you might get to act well enough not to spoil your singing if you were stronger and less frightened.”