Cattermole's millions! I recall that Cattermole never said a word against her at the time, and yet her conduct must have hit him hard. At all events, he is still a bachelor. He spoke of her to-day with a sort of musing tenderness, as if he were looking at a photograph of a dead friend. I gave him what news I had of her. Chantrey died a year or two ago, leaving no money, to speak of; but their daughter, Marion, is gifted with beauty and a voice, both carefully trained, and she made a good début in Opera last season, and will sing here next winter.
Cattermole listened to me, sitting sidewise in his low-backed chair, one long leg thrown across the other, hands folded on his knee, and that remarkable head bent forward.
"So you've heard her sing? What is her voice?"
"Pure soprano; a wonderful voice, but cold," said I. "It's like diamond-clear water flowing over ice, if you want a simile."
He meditated a while, ploughing his slender fingers through his long hair.
"Such a voice," he finally said, "can win admiration, but not enthusiasm, devotion, furor. It won't bring nations to her feet. I would like her to be the greatest singer in the world!"
"She is what she is; she can't be changed now."
"Great music is, in the first place, warmth, color and emotion," said he; "in the second place, it's light, form and intellect. In other words, music—singing—is love audibly expressed by art. Until love has awakened the soul it cannot reach the highest point of art."
"Then Marion won't reach it. She is said to have already declined several good offers on the ground that she's married to her art."
"That is a shallow theory," he replied. "Love does not exclude art; it is the life of art, and most of all, of music. What she needs is love—a great passion."
"Perhaps; but, without being an avowed man-hater, the girl seems to care nothing for men. There's such a thing as heredity, you know," I ventured to add.
"She is but a girl of twenty," he said; and then, suddenly rising to his feet, appealed to me with great force: "Why don't you influence her?"
It surprised me. "Why don't you influence her yourself?" I returned. "Have her and her mother up here; they're in town."
He gazed abstractedly for a few moments, pressing his lips against each other, and at last exclaimed, "So I will!"
III
Marion and her mother arrived yesterday. So, also, did a young fellow named Morton Travers. He is a Harvard graduate, with more physique than brains, I judge; distinguished himself in some international university boat race a year or two ago, I believe. I presume Cattermole must have met him in London. Outside of his muscles, however, there is a certain power about the youth, a vigor of temperament, a massive self-poise, a steady, black-browed intensity in his gaze. He is polite and shows good form, but I don't take to him particularly. What he is here for I know not.
Mrs. Chantrey never looked better, or seemed more disposed to be agreeable. I don't approve of this lady, but that does not prevent me from greatly enjoying her socicty. She is much more charming than a sincere or conscientious person could be, and she is full of really interesting conversation. She meets your eye with a congenial, understanding, inviting look, as much as to say, "You're delightful, you're clever, you know what's what—and there's a pair of us!"—which is engagingly flattering. Her life has been a fight from the start, and not a successful one; she has had disappointments, provocations, insults, poverty, cverything that could exasperate and humiliate an ambitious, clever woman; but the only visible effect has been to make her better company. She is perfect
