"My dear Miss Gower," said Crossley, polite but cold, "I regret hearing you say that. The fact is very different. Not until you had done so—so unacceptably at several rehearsals that news of it reached me by another way—not until I myself went to Mr. Ransdell about you did he admit that there could be a possibility of a doubt of your succeeding. I had to go to rehearsal myself and directly order him to restore Miss Esmond and lay you off."
Mildred was not unprepared. She received this tranquilly. "Mr. Ransdell is a very clever man," said she with perfect good humor. "I've no hope of convincing you, but I must tell my side."
And clearly and simply, with no concealments through fear of disturbing his high ideal of her ladylike delicacy, she told him the story. He listened, seated well back in his tilted desk-chair, his gaze upon the ceiling. When she finished he held his pose a moment, then got up and paced the length of the office several times, his hands in his pockets. He paused, looked keenly at her, a good-humored smile in those eyes of his so fascinating to women because of their frank wavering of an inconstancy it would indeed be a triumph to seize and hold. Said he:
"And your bad throat? Did Ransdell give you a germ?"
She colored. He had gone straight at the weak point.
"If you'd been able to sing," he went on, "nobody could have done you up."
She could not gather herself together for speech.
"Didn't you know your voice wasn't reliable when you came to me?"
"Yes," she admitted.
"And wasn't that the REAL reason you had given up grand opera?" pursued he mercilessly.