“I in training for a prima-donna! How can you say so?”
“Do we not all know the forte of Herr von Francius? And—excuse me—are not your windows opposite to ours, and open as a rule? Can I not hear the music you practice, and shall I not believe my own ears?”
“I am sure your own ears do not tell you that a future prima-donna lives opposite to you,” said I, feeling most insanely and unreasonably hurt and cut up at the idea.
“Will you tell me that you are not studying for the stage?”
“I never said I was not. I said I was not a future prima-donna. My voice is not half good enough. I am not clever enough, either.”
He laughed.
“As if voice or cleverness had anything to do with it. Personal appearance and friends at court are the chief things. I have known prime-donne—seen them, I mean—and from my place below the foot-lights I have had the impertinence to judge them upon their own merits. Provided they were handsome, impudent, and unscrupulous enough, their public seemed gladly to dispense with art, cultivation, or genius in their performances and conceptions.”
“And you think that I am, or shall be in time, handsome, impudent, and unscrupulous enough,” said I, in a low choked tone.
My fleeting joy was being thrust back by hands most ruthless. Unmixed satisfaction for even the brief space of an hour or so was not to be included in my lot.
“O, bewahre!” said he, with a little laugh, that chilled me still further. “I think no such thing. The beauty is there, mein Fräulein—pardon me for saying so—”