"That's unkind, Miss Thompson," answered Bob. "I recall you quite distinctly. You wrote a letter for me in the morning after I met you."
"Do you mean the letter to the brunette you met on the boat?" said Betty quietly.
"Girl I met on the boat?" he frowned, as if consulting a mental passenger list. "Oh, no, it was to a girl I once saw off on a steamer—quite a little girl—that is to say, she was a little girl then. It was a long time ago. She must be—well, she must be getting along."
"An old maid?"
He pursed his lips and nodded.
"I thought you said she had a voice—was going to be a singer or something of that sort?"
"She thinks she has a voice," he corrected. "Perhaps she had one once. It's astonishing, though, how long a voice will last, Miss Thompson. They say Patti sang when she was over seventy."
Betty suddenly became intensely preoccupied in the business of refilling her cup. For a time she seemed to forget the young man's presence altogether.
"So you think," she said at length, having exhausted the possibilities of the coffee cup, "that having no voice, your friend is only wasting her time in—where did you say she was studying?"
"In Paris. I may be wrong, Miss Thompson," he continued, "but the probabilities are against her. In every branch of art there are at least a hundred who fail for one that succeeds."