She changed it herself. "You sang beautifully," she said, with some return of warmth—even with some approach to fervor.
"Oh, I can sing," he returned nonchalantly, "if I can only have my hands in my pockets, or waving in the air, or anywhere but on a keyboard."
"I wish you had let them persuade you to sing another." She was not only willing to admire, but desirous: conscientious amends, perhaps, for an earlier verdict. "One or two more skips, you know, after getting started."
"Oh, once was enough. A happy coincidence. The next might have been an unhappy one."
"You have never learned to accompany yourself?"
"As you've seen, I'm a rather poor hand at it; I've depended a good deal on others. Or, better, on another."
She looked at him earnestly. "Have you ever sung to an obbligato?"
"None of my songs, thus far, has called for one. An obbligato? Never so much honored. No, indeed. Why, to me it would seem almost like singing with an orchestra. Imagine a 'cello. Imagine a flute—still I'm not a soprano going mad. Or imagine a saxophone; that might be droll."
He gave out a sort of dragging bleat. She did not smile; perhaps she felt such an approach to waggery unworthy of him. Perhaps she was holding him up to the dignity of the natural scene, and to the importance of the occasion as she conceived it.
Cope had no desire to figure as a comique, and at once regained sobriety. "Of course," he admitted, "we are not at a thé dansant or a cabaret. Such things ought not to be thought of—here."