Tancredi was too much used to the emotions of the geniuses and near-geniuses, whose temperamental outbreaks she had learned by heart, not to understand what was the matter.
Waving the composed Marçon out of her room, she pushed Patricia to the stool with no very gentle hand. "There now, my little one. Sing for me in your own way," she commanded. "Rome was not builded in one day. You are too much excited—and you so young," she ended with a softening of pity in her rich tones.
Somehow that accusation of youthfulness was the spur that drove Patricia to victory. Raising her head with a toss of determination, she ran her hands over the keys first lightly and then with growing certainty of herself, while, unseen by her, Tancredi nodded and smiled to herself in high good humor.
The song bubbled out in Patricia's best notes, rippling in silver waves through a golden atmosphere of pure melody. She sang it to the end and then sat mutely on the bench, with her anxieties returning slowly as the silence grew.
When she could bear it no longer she turned a pale face to where Tancredi sat staring into space.
"S—shall I try it again?" she faltered uncertainly.
Tancredi shook her head silently. "That will be enough of songs for the present, my treasure," she said, in a strange tone, of which Patricia could make nothing.
Presently she rose and walked the length of the apartment with something very like triumph on her heavy face, at which the puzzled Patricia wondered all the more, though she waited docilely enough on her stool in front of the great shining piano.
After a few turns, Tancredi came suddenly to her where she sat and took her chin in her warm, soft padded fingers, staring sharply into her face as though to read her whole being at a glance. Decidedly, she was a woman of unusual moods, for she stooped and kissed the anxious, girlish face, first on one cheek and then on the other.
"There, my little one, we are friends now," she said, releasing her, "and you shall sometimes sing for me some of those songs when it is needed to cheer your heart. But otherwise you shall not sing—no, not for the king himself should he ask it."