Mandel, watching her, said to Esmé:
“I’m always ready to train—that sort of girl; always on the lookout for them. One discovers a specimen once or twice in a decade.... Two or three in a lifetime: that’s all.”
“Train them?” repeated Esmé, with an indolent smile. “Break them, you mean, don’t you?”
“Yes. The breaking, however, is usually mutual. However, that girl could go far under my direction.”
“Yes, she could go as far as hell.”
“I mean artistically,” remarked Mandel, undisturbed.
“As what, for example?”
“As anything. After all, I have flaire, even if it failed me this time. But now I see. It’s there, in her—what I’m always searching for.”
“What may that be, dear friend?”