"But I never sang with Alvary," she added.
"Where is the voice?"
"It is dead," she replied; "but it was only a skeleton when it lived. I learned that afterwards. I had the artistic temperament without the art."
Nevins and Ardly, watching the mobility of her face, saw the old half-disdainful weariness steal back.
"So you have learned that," said Nevins. "It is the greater wisdom—to learn what one has not."
"I don't idealize any longer," answered Mariana, playing with the glove in her lap. "I have lopped off an ideal every hour since I saw you."
"Sensible woman," returned Ardly. "We don't lop off our ideals—we distort them. Life is a continuous adjustment of the things that should be to the things that are."
"And middle-age shows the adjustment to be a misfit," added Nevins, his boyish face growing almost sad. "We grow tired of burnishing up the facts of life, and we leave the tarnish to mix with the triple-plate."
"Are you middle-aged?" asked Mariana.
"Not since you entered."