"Cyrilla, I want you to tell the exact, honest truth. Is there any hope for a woman with a delicate throat to make a grand-opera career?"
Cyrilla paled, looked pleadingly at Mildred.
"Tell him," commanded Mildred.
"Very little," said Mrs. Brindley. "But—"
"Don't try to soften it," interrupted Mildred. "The truth, the plain truth."
"You've no right to draw me into this," cried Cyrilla indignantly, and she started to leave the room.
"I want him to know," said Mildred. "And he wants to know."
"I refuse to be drawn into it," Cyrilla said, and disappeared.
But Mildred saw that Stanley had been shaken. She proceeded to explain to him at length what a singer's career meant—the hardships, the drafts on health and strength, the absolute necessity of being reliable, of singing true, of not disappointing audiences—what a delicate throat meant—how delicate her throat was—how deficient she was in the kind of physical strength needed—muscular power with endurance back of it. When she finished he understood.
"I'd always thought of it as an art," he said ruefully. "Why, it's mostly health and muscles and things that have nothing to do with music." He was dazed and offended by this uncovering of the mechanism of the art—by the discovery of the coarse and painful toil, the grossly physical basis, of what had seemed to him all idealism. He had been full of the delusions of spontaneity and inspiration, like all laymen, and all artists, too, except those of the higher ranks—those who have fought their way up to the heights and, so, have learned that one does not achieve them by being caught up to them gloriously in a fiery cloud, but by doggedly and dirtily and sweatily toiling over every inch of the cruel climb.