“Exactly. She has an absolute command over her means.”
“One cannot deny it. No musician could contest it. But the question that interests me lies behind all this. There is more than accomplishment in her performance. There is temperament, there is mind, there is emotion and complete understanding. I am scarcely speaking strongly enough in saying complete—perhaps infinitely subtle would be nearer the mark. What do you say?”
“I don’t think if you said that there appears to be an infinitely subtle understanding at work in Lady Holme’s singing you would be going at all too far.”
“Appears to be?”
Sir Donald stopped for a moment on the pavement under a gas-lamp. As the light fell on him he looked like a weary old ghost longing to fade away into the dark shadows of the London night.
“You say ‘appears to be,’” he repeated.
“Yes.”
“May I ask why?”
“Well, would you undertake to vouch for Lady Holme’s understanding—I mean for the infinite subtlety of it?”
Sir Donald began to walk on once more.