"Is she not then charming?" asked a voice at her side. The real lace had spoken at last. That was how they discovered afterwards that she was the wife of an ambassador. The lady had her mind distracted first by the sheer beauty of a famous voice which she loved, next by the delicate profile of the face beside her--a type not usual in London.
Elsie turned her eyes with a start.
"It's like summer, the voice," she said simply.
"It's like the best method I've ever heard," said Jean darkly. (Oh, how to emulate such a creature!)
"Ah, yes. But she returns. And now, while yet she bows and does not sing--a leetle vulgar is it not?"
The ambassador's wife could discount her favourite it seemed. That was just the difficulty in art. To remain supreme in one art and yet recognize other forms of it, that was the fortune of few. The singer had enormous jewels at her neck.
"She would wear cabbage as diamonds," said the lady, "but with her voice one forgives."
Thereafter there was a procession of the most talented performers at that moment in London. Magicians with violins drew melodies in a faultless manner from smooth strings and a bow which seemed to be playing on butter. Technique was evident nowhere, only the easy lovely result of it. In an hour it became as facile a thing to play any instrument, sing any song, as though practice and discouragement did not exist in any art at all.
"Mr. Green played decorously and magnificently," said Elsie. "They are all a little decorous, aren't they?" she asked, "except that wonderful thing in the white and silver gown."
Nothing had touched the daring beauty of that voice.