"It's as I thought," said he. "Your voice can be trained—to speak, I mean. I don't know as to its singing value. . . . Have you good health?"
"I never have even colds. Yes, I'm strong."
"You'll need it."
"I have needed it," said she. Into her face came the sad, bitter expression with its curious relief of a faint cynical smile.
He leaned back in his chair and looked at her through a cloud of smoke. She saw that his eyes were not gray, as she had thought, but brown, a hazel brown with points of light sparkling in the irises and taking away all the suggestion of weakness and sentimentality that makes pure brown eyes unsatisfactory in a man. He said slowly:
"When I saw you—in the Martin—you were on the way down. You went, I see."
She nodded. "I'm still there."
"You like it? You wish to stay?"
She shook her head smilingly. "No, but I can stay if it's necessary. I've discovered that I've got the health and the nerves for anything."
"That's a great discovery. . . . Well, you'll soon be on your way up. . . . Do you wish to know why I spoke to you this morning?—Why I remembered you?"