“Then I’m sorry for the ‘highway.’ I remember when I first heard you in Pittsburg, long ago. It was a life-line you threw me. It’s about one of the people along your highway that I’ve come to see you. Whom do you consider the best teacher for voice in Chicago?”
Mr. Thomas frowned and pulled his heavy mustache. “Let me see; I suppose on the whole Madison Bowers is the best. He’s intelligent, and he had good training. I don’t like him.”
Harsanyi nodded. “I thought there was no one else. I don’t like him, either, so I hesitated. But I suppose he must do, for the present.”
“Have you found anything promising? One of your own students?”
“Yes, sir. A young Swedish girl from somewhere in Colorado. She is very talented, and she seems to me to have a remarkable voice.”
“High voice?”
“I think it will be; though her low voice has a beautiful quality, very individual. She has had no instruction in voice at all, and I shrink from handing her over to anybody; her own instinct about it has been so good. It is one of those voices that manages itself easily, without thinning as it goes up; good breathing and perfect relaxation. But she must have a teacher, of course. There is a break in the middle voice, so that the voice does not all work together; an unevenness.”
Thomas looked up. “So? Curious; that cleft often happens with the Swedes. Some of their best singers have had it. It always reminds me of the space you so often see between their front teeth. Is she strong physically?”
Harsanyi’s eye flashed. He lifted his hand before him and clenched it. “Like a horse, like a tree! Every time I give her a lesson, I lose a pound. She goes after what she wants.”
“Intelligent, you say? Musically intelligent?”