“Why don’t you make the change?” asked Joyce.
“I’m not good enough. I am too insignificant. But I don’t really mind. I love singing for singing’s sake, no matter where it is. I only have one great anxiety in life—that I should lose my voice. Then I should put my head under my wing and die, like the cigale. That is to say, if the cigale has wings—has she?”
“Yes, pretty brown wings—as yours must be. I believe you have them somewhere hidden from us.”
“You mustn’t make pretty speeches,” said Yvonne, pleased.
“It expresses clumsily what I feel,” said Joyce, with a sudden rush of feeling. “I have been asking myself what are the common grounds on which we can meet—you, a pure, bright, beautiful soul—and I, a mean, degraded man, who knows it to be almost an outrage upon you to cross your threshold. I feel we are not of the same human clay. I wonder how it is that the sight of me does n’t frighten you. Thank God you don’t see me as I see myself.”
“Hush!” said Yvonne, gently.
She glanced at him in a puzzled way, unable to comprehend. She knew that he felt his disgrace very deeply, but she could not understand the way in which he related it with herself. Beyond looking careworn and ill, he seemed almost the same externally as in the days of their former intimacy; and more so now than on the occasion of their meeting on the Bank Holiday, when he was shabbily attired. Now he was wearing a new blue serge suit and a carefully tied cravat—he had bought the clothes on the chance of his being suddenly required to be correctly dressed, and this was his first time of wearing them—and looked at all points the neat, well-groomed gentleman she had always known; so that she found it difficult to realize fully even the change in his material fortunes. The blight that had come over his soul was altogether beyond her power of perception. She could find no words to supplement her sympathetic exclamation, and so there was silence. When she looked at him again, as he sat opposite, his cheek resting on his hand, and his mournful eyes fixed upon her, she found herself thinking what a good-looking fellow he was, with his clear-cut face, refined features and trim blonde moustache. It was a pity he had those deep lines on each side of his mouth and wore so unsmiling an expression. There was sunshine in Yvonne’s heart that quickly dissipated clouds. She rose suddenly, and went round to the key-board of the great piano.
“I ’ll sing you something first and then we ’ll try your voice.”
She paused before she sat down, and asked:
“Would you like something sad or something gay?”