Toward the end of the summer Moldini said:
"It's over. You have won."
Mildred looked at him in puzzled surprise.
"You have learned it all. You will succeed. The rest is detail."
"But I've learned nothing as yet," protested she.
"You have learned to teach yourself," replied the Italian. "You at last can hear yourself sing, and you know when you sing right and when you sing wrong, and you know how to sing right. The rest is easy. Ah, my dear Miss Gower, you will work NOW!"
Mildred did not understand. She was even daunted by that "You will work NOW!" She had been thinking that to work harder was impossible. What did he expect of her? Something she feared she could not realize. But soon she understood—when he gave her songs, then began to teach her a role, the part of Madame Butterfly herself. "I can help you only a little there," he said. "You will have to go to my friend Ferreri for roles. But we can make a beginning."
She had indeed won. She had passed from the stage where a career is all drudgery—the stage through which only the strong can pass without giving up and accepting failure or small success. She had passed to the stage where there is added pleasure to the drudgery, for, the drudgery never ceases. And what was the pleasure? Why, more work—always work—bringing into use not merely the routine parts of the mind, but also the imaginative and creative faculties. She had learned her trade—not well enough, for no superior man or woman ever feels that he or she knows the trade well enough—but well enough to begin to use it.
Said Moldini: "When the great one, who has achieved and arrived, is asked for advice by the sweet, enthusiastic young beginner, what is the answer? Always the same: 'My dear child, don't! Go back home, and marry and have babies.' You know why now?"
And Mildred, looking back over the dreary drudgery that had been, and looking forward to the drudgery yet to come, dreary enough for all the prospects of a few flowers and a little sun—Mildred said: "Indeed I do, maestro."