“Let it sleep, Jacobelli. Remember Paoli when she let love conquer her.”
For the moment the old maestro forgot the figure behind the window curtain. With arms thrown upward he turned on the banker.
“You know not anything about Paoli! I, Jacobelli, tell you that! You cannot speak of her with any understanding. She was a law to herself in her own generation. Few women can be that. But I, who know what lay behind the wall of Tittani, say to you I would rather this child lay dead now, with no fulfillment in her life, than that she should know the agony and failure as an artiste that her grandmother did when she sacrificed her whole womanhood—for what? Love, pouf!”
“Can a woman’s nature reach its ripest fulfillment without love?” Ward’s tone was lowered. “History proves that the greatest geniuses have been those who suffered most.”
“But not the singer, signor.” Jacobelli paused in his march up and down the studio. “The singer is something different. It is instinctive. I have heard the most marvelous impassioned voices pour from the most commonplace peasant types. I have heard the greatest tenor of all times tear the emotions of thousands to pieces, and step into his dressing-room to rail at his wife for not providing his favorite dish for him after the opera, ravioli and lampreys. The most superb lyric voice of to-day comes from a little, stout contadina who picked up centimes around the flower-market in Naples when I was young. Do you think she acquired divinity of soul and utterance from some supreme emotion? Ridiculous. She is a gourmand, a virago, absolutely bourgeois, yet she sings like a seraph. Why, then, is it not in Carlota’s voice?”
Ward rose leisurely. The old silken curtains hung motionless. The shadows were heavy in the corners of the studio.
“She is a higher type,” he said in a low voice. “When you agree with me, bring her to me.”
CHAPTER II
After Ward had gone the old Italian maestro seated himself at the piano, improvising as he always did when he was disturbed. It was an enormous old ebony instrument, mellow and vibrant in its response to his touch. He did not even look up as Carlota leaned her elbows upon a pile of dusty folios, watching him anxiously. Finally she drew a quick, impatient breath.
“I wish he would never come here again.”