The Baroness takes it upon herself to reply, and explains at considerable length how her historical schemes and researches have hitherto rendered a wandering life for herself and her daughter imperatively necessary.
Morinski, who seems to take more interest in Stella's fine eyes than in her mother's historical studies, interrupts the elder lady with some rudeness, and, turning to Stella, asks, "Do you intend to go upon the stage?"
"Yes," Stella meekly replies.
"Only upon condition of her capacity to become a star of the first magnitude should I consent to my daughter's going upon the stage," the Baroness declares, in her magnificent manner.
"It is a little difficult to prognosticate with certainty in such a case," Herr Morinski observes, with an odd smile. "Hm! hm! You may sometimes see a brilliant meteor flash across the skies, larger apparently than any of the stars; you fix your eyes upon it, but hardly have you begun to admire so exquisite a natural phenomenon when it has vanished. Another time you scarcely perceive a small red spark lying on the pavement, but before you are aware of it, it has set fire to half the town. Just so it is with our artistic débuts."
At the close of this tirade, which Herr Morinski has enunciated in very harsh French with a strong Jewish accent, he turns again to Stella and asks, "Will you sing me something? It would interest me very much to hear you."
Stella's heart beats fast. How many other singers have had to engage in an interminable correspondence and to entreat for infinite patronage before gaining admission to the famous Morinski and inducing him to listen to them, while he has asked her to sing, unsolicited, after scarcely ten minutes' conversation!
She gratefully accedes to his proposal.
"I should greatly prefer your making the trial on the stage itself, rather than in the foyer," says Morinski. "I could decide far better as to the strength of your voice. Have the kindness to follow me."
And, leading the way, he precedes them through an endless labyrinth of ill-lighted corridors to the stage, which, illuminated at this hour by only a couple of foot-lights, shows gray and colourless against the pitch-dark auditorium.