“No, she’ll never sing again,” I said, in answer to a question. “She seems to have made up her mind to that.”
He swung his cane, cutting at the head of a dry weed.
“That’s a good thing.”
“Why is it a good thing?”
“Oh, because,” he dropped a pace behind me to let a straggling, red-nosed family pass and I craned my head back to hear him. “She’s not fitted for that kind of life. It’s not for women like her.”
“Why?”
He was beside me again.
“She’s too—er—too fine, too delicately organized.”
I didn’t answer. Knowing what I did, what was there for me to say?
“The women to succeed in that have got to be aggressive, fight their way like men. She never could do it.”