Miss Gorringe pondered:
“They can teach them rôles, hammer it into them. When a person’s got the looks she has they sometimes do it. But I guess they’ve done all they can for her. She’s been with Vignorol for two years. He wouldn’t have taken her unless he thought there was something in it. And John Masters has been training her besides, and I’ve heard people say there’s no one better than Masters for that. You see they can teach her how to walk and stand and make gestures, but they can’t put the thing into her head or her voice. She doesn’t seem to understand, she doesn’t feel.”
I was silent. She did feel, I knew it, I’d seen it. There was some queer lack of coordination between her power to feel and her power to express.
Miss Gorringe administered the coup de grâce.
“She sang the duet from The Valkyrie as if she was telling Siegmund to put on his hat and come to supper.”
“It’s imagination,” I said.
“It’s temperament,” Miss Gorringe corrected. “And without it, the way she is, she’d better go in for church singing, or oratorio, or even teaching.”
The dusk was gathering and I was alone when she came down. She threw herself into the wicker chair beside my sofa. Her face looked thinner and two slight lines showed round her mouth.
“Well?” I said, investing my voice with a fictitious lightness. “Where have you been all day?”
“I’m tired or I’d have been down earlier. Have you seen the others?”