“I hope that’ll hit some one on the head,” she said, banging the window down.
“Have you had the public’s opinion on your singing?” I asked, feeling it best to ignore her eccentricities of temper.
“Yes. I was in a concert in Philadelphia a year ago, with some others.”
“And what was the verdict?”
She gave a bitter smile.
“The critics who knew something and took themselves seriously, said ‘A large coarse voice and no temperament.’ The critics who were just men said nothing about the singing and a good deal about the singer’s looks—” She paused, then added with sulky passion, “Damn my looks.”
She was going to the window again and I hastily interposed.
“Don’t throw out any more oranges. You might hit a baby lying in its carriage and break its nose.”
Though she did not give any evidence of having heard, she wheeled from the window and turned back to me.
“It’s been nothing but disappointments—sickening disappointments. I wish I’d been left where I was. Three years ago in California I was living in a little town on the line between Los Angeles and San Francisco. I sang in the church and got ambitious and went up to San Francisco. They made a good deal of fuss over me—said another big singer was going to come out of California. I was just beginning to wonder if I really was some one, when one of those scratch little opera companies that tour South America and Mexico came up. Masters, Jack—the man you met here the other night—was managing it. I got an introduction and sang for him, and you ought to have heard him go up in the air. Bang—pouf!—like dynamite! Not the way he is now—oh, no—”