'Of course?' she repeated, in a thoughtful way. 'Did you mean "of course it is possible—and easy," my dear? The tone of your voice made me think that was what you meant. Yes—you meant that, and you have a right to mean it, but you don't know. That's the great difference—you don't know! You haven't begun as I did. You're a lady, a real lady, brought up amongst ladies from your childhood. But that's not what will keep you good! It's not your refinement, nor your good manners, nor your white hands that never milked a cow, or swept a stable, or hoed the weeds out from between the vines in summer. That was my work till I was seventeen. And my mother was a good woman, my dear, just as good as yours, though she was only a peasant of Provence. How do I know it? If she had not been good, my father would have killed her, of course. That was our custom. And he was good, in his way, too, and kind. He always told me that if I went wrong he would shoot me—and when the English artist came and lodged in our house for the summer and made love to me, my father explained everything to him also. So poor Goodyear saw that he must marry me, and we were married, before I was eighteen. He took me away to Paris, and tried to make a lady of me, and he had me taught to sing, because he loved my voice. Do you see? That was how it all happened—and still I was good, as good as you are! Yes—"of course," as you say! It was easy enough!'
'He died young, didn't he?' Margaret asked quietly.
She had seated herself on the corner of the toilet-table to listen, while Madame Bonanni leaned back in the low chair and looked at herself, sometimes absently, sometimes with pity.
'Yes,' she answered. 'He died very soon and left me nothing but Tommy and my voice. Poor Goodyear! He painted very badly, he never sold anything, and his father starved him because he had married me. It was far better that he should die of pneumonia than of hunger, for that would certainly have been the end of it.
'And you went on the stage at once?' Margaret asked, wishing to hear more.
Madame Bonanni shrugged her shoulders and leaned forward to the looking-glass.
'I had a fortune in my throat,' she said, daubing rouge on the cheek that was only half done. 'I had been well taught in those years, and there were plenty of managers only too anxious to offer me their protection—managers and other people, too. What could I do?'
She shrugged her shoulders again, and laughed a little harshly as she gave a half-shy glance at Margaret. The latter was not a child, but a grown woman of two-and-twenty. She answered gravely.
'With your voice and talent, I don't see why you needed any protection, as you call it.'
Madame Bonanni laughed again.