"Yes, but not so unusual as might be thought. As a matter of fact, there are thousands of fine voices. The trouble is in reliability. Only a few are reliable."
She nodded slowly and thoughtfully. "I begin to understand what Mr. Keith meant," she said. "I begin to see what I have to do, and how—how impossible it is."
"By no means," declared Jennings. "If I did not think otherwise, I'd not be giving my time to you."
She looked at him gravely. His eyes shifted, then returned defiantly, aggressively. She said:
"You can't help me to what I want. So this is my last lesson—for the present. I may come back some day—when I am ready for what you have to give."
"You are going to give up?"
"Oh, no—oh, dear me, no," replied she. "I realize that you're laughing in your sleeve as I say so, because you think I'll never get anywhere. But you—and Mr. Keith—may be mistaken." She drew from her muff a piece of music—the "Batti Batti," from "Don Giovanni." "If you please," said she, "we'll spend the rest of my time in going over this. I want to be able to sing it as well as possible."
He looked searchingly at her. "If you wish," said he. "But I doubt if you'll be able to sing at all."
"On the contrary, my cold's entirely gone," replied she. "I had an exciting evening, I doctored myself before I went to bed, and three or four times in the night. I found, this morning, that I could sing."
And it was so. Never had she sung better. "Like a true artist!" he declared with an enthusiasm that had a foundation of sincerity. "You know, Miss Stevens, you came very near to having that rarest of all gifts—a naturally placed voice. If you hadn't had singing teachers as a girl to make you self-conscious and to teach you wrong, you'd have been a wonder."