"I mean a great deal more than that. You are possessed by it. The true artist always is. Don't you feel every time you sing that you are expressing in the fullest and most perfect form the essential you? That your entity is completed--rounded off as it were; that your very soul becomes tangible in song?"
Billy softly and silently vanished from Lallie's side; and she, wishing with all her heart that Mrs. Atwood would go and talk to some one else, said humbly:
"I'm afraid I don't feel nearly all that. I'm a very prosaic person really, and sometimes the inane words one has to sing--well, they get between me and the music and spoil it; though that, too, is inane enough sometimes."
Mrs. Atwood leant back in her chair and smiled indulgently at Lallie.
"Oh, how I envy you," she exclaimed; "but at the same time I am quite sure that we agree in diathesis: that although we may arrive at our conclusions by different methods, they are practically identical. I cannot conceive that you can possess such a power of self-revelation without the artistic temperament, any more than I can allow that I, lacking means of self-expression, must necessarily lack temperament. I feel that we shall have much in common."
Lallie looked as though she feared this confidence on Mrs. Atwood's part was somewhat misplaced and said gravely:
"I should never say that you lacked means of self-expression. You seem to me to have an unusually large vocabulary."
Mrs. Atwood laughed. "Now you are making game of me, and I believe I must have frightened Mr. Chester away--too bad. I suppose you know every one here very well. This is my first visit, you know--all strange except dear Mr. and Mrs. Chester, such kind people! Who is that man sitting so close by her?"
Lallie's seat was considerably higher than Mrs. Atwood's, and the girl looked down at her with a curiously appraising glance.
"I thought I heard you say just before tea that he is an old friend of yours."