He met it with a slight smile.
“Our friend Lizzie here,” he said, “has dreams—what I’m beginning to think are pipe dreams.”
“Jack,” she cried with a sudden note of pleading, “you know that’s not true. You know I’ll some day sing there.”
“I know you want to,” he replied, then with the air of ignoring her and addressing himself exclusively to me: “Miss Harris has a good voice, I might say a fine voice. But—all here,” he spread his fingers fan-wise across his forehead and tapped on that broad expanse, “the soul, the thing that sees and feels—absent, nil,” he fluttered the spread fingers in the air.
I was astounded at his cruel frankness—all the more so as I saw it had completely dashed her spirits.
“Rubbish, I don’t believe a word of it,” I answered hotly, entirely forgetting that I was angry with her.
“Not a bit,” he returned coolly, “I’ve told her so often. A great presence, a fine mechanism,” he swept her with a gesture as if she had been a statue, “but the big thing, the heart of it all—not there. No imagination, no temperament, just a well regulated, handsomely decorated musical box. Isn’t that so, Lizzie?”
He turned from me and directly addressed her, his eyes narrowed, his face showing a faint sardonic amusement. I wondered what she was going to say—whether she would fly at him, or whether, like the woman I knew, she would hide her mortification and refuse him the satisfaction of seeing how he hurt her.
She did neither. Moving to the divan, she picked up her coat, showing me a face as dejected as that of a disappointed child. His words seemed to have stricken all the buoyancy out of her and she shrugged herself into the coat with slow fatigued movements. Bending to pick up her gloves and glasses she said somberly:
“I’ll get a soul some day.”