When she had exhausted her own eager confidences, Mr. Channing paid her the compliment of talking about himself. He made confidences in return. She learned that he, like her, had suffered and was still suffering from a lack of sympathy on the part of his family. They failed completely to appreciate the necessities, the difficulties, of the artistic temperament. In fact, he had practically given up his family, and was a homeless wanderer upon the face of the earth, seeking his encouragement among strangers.
"But surely they must appreciate you now," cried Jacqueline. "Why, you are famous!"
He admitted it, rather sadly. "Famous—and lonely," he said.
She gave him an impulsive hand by way of sympathy. "I'd be willing to be lonely, if I could be famous. But I wouldn't be willing to have mother lonely," she added. "I never could make up my mind to leave her here alone."
"Alone? But there's your sister."
"No, there isn't. Not now. She's here, of course, but—" The girl's face shadowed, but she did not explain. The shock of that terrible scene between the two beings she loved best was a thing that did not bear thinking of, much less speaking of. Sometimes at night she woke trembling and sobbing with the memory of it, as from a nightmare. But by day she put it from her determinedly, and tried to pretend that everything was as it always had been in her home.
"Have you told your mother about this ambition of yours?" he asked curiously.
She shook her head. "No. I've hinted, but they—they laughed at me, and Jemmy said that it wouldn't be lady-like to go on the stage, even in grand opera."
Channing smiled. "The standards of the world, fortunately, vary somewhat from the standards of rural Kentucky. Some of the greatest 'ladies' I have known happened to be on the stage, and not always in grand opera."
He went on to speak of various singers and actors and painters and writers of his acquaintance, of studios and greenrooms, customs in European countries, famous friendships between royalty and artists; and she had her first glimpse of a world that made her own seem as barren and desolate as some desert isle.