“That’s a sad remark for twenty-eight. A woman’s grande passion usually happens when she is thirty-three.”
“Mine won’t,” said Nancy obstinately.
“I shouldn’t dare the God of Love,” Kenrick warned her. “Remember, he’s a mischievous boy and nothing gives him greater delight than to behave as such. Never dare a boy to climb an apple-tree or Cupid to shoot his arrows in vain. You offered him a fine target by that remark of yours. But don’t let’s begin an argument about love. It’s your voice I want to talk about. Surely you must realise that you possess a contralto of the finest quality?”
“I thought it was a fairly good natural voice,” Nancy admitted. “But I certainly never supposed it was of the finest quality.”
“Not only have you a marvellous voice, but you can act. Very few contraltos can act. On the operatic stage they usually sound like governesses who have drunk a little too much at a fancy-dress ball.”
“Rather voluptuous governesses usually,” Nancy laughed.
“Yes, but with the healthy voluptuousness of women who have been eating plenty of the best butter and drinking quarts of the richest cream. You would be different.”
“I hate to be rude,” Nancy said. “But do you know, it always seems to me such a waste of time to talk about impossibilities. Perhaps I’ve no imagination. I’ll talk as long and as earnestly as you like about the best way of travelling from one town to another, or of any of life’s small problems, but to discuss which seaside resort in the moon would be the jolliest place to spend one’s holidays surely isn’t worth while.”
“But why is your appearance in opera so remote from any prospect of being realised?”
“I’ve told you, my dear man,” said Nancy impatiently. “I have planned my life so that my small daughter may have what I could not have. To indulge my own ambitions at her expense would be wrong. I can’t pretend that I’m denying myself much, because, to be honest, until I had your letter I had never contemplated myself as an operatic star. I knew I had an unusually good contralto voice. I knew that I could act as well as most women and a good deal better than some. Your letter was a pleasure, because it is always a pleasure to feel that one has interested somebody. I am grateful to you for inviting me out to supper and saying nice things about my possibilities. But now let’s talk of something else, for you’ll never infect me with any ambition to do anything that could risk my ability to do what I can for my daughter, just by acting quietly in the provinces as I am acting at present.”