He stopped and blushed, while Sheila, herself with a little touch of color, answered him that she hoped he would always speak to her quite frankly, and then suggested that he might sing once more for her.

“Very well,” he said as he sat down to the piano:  “this is not any more a sad song.  It is about a young lady who will not let her sweetheart kiss her, except on conditions.  You shall hear the conditions, and what he says.”

Sheila began to wonder whether this innocent-eyed lad had been imposing on her.  The song was acted as well as sung.  It consisted chiefly of a dialogue between the two lovers; and the boy, with a wonderful ease and grace and skill, mimicked the shy coquetries of the girl, her fits of petulance and dictation, and the pathetic remonstrances of her companion, his humble entreaties and his final sullenness, which is only conquered by her sudden and ample consent.  “What a rare faculty of artistic representation this precocious boy must have,” she thought, “if he really exhibits all those moods and whims and tricks of manner without having himself been in the position of the despairing and imploring lover!”

“You were not thinking of the beautiful lady in St. Petersburg when you were singing just now,” Sheila said on his coming back to her.

“Oh no,” he said carelessly:  “that is nothing.  You have not to imagine anything.  These people, you see them on every stage in the comedies and farces.”

“But that might happen in actual life,” said Sheila, still not quite sure about him.  “Do you know that many people would think you must have yourself been teased in that way, or you could not imitate it so naturally?”

“I!  Oh no, madame,” he said seriously:  “I should not act that way if I were in love with a woman.  If I found her a comedy-actress, liking to make her amusement out of our relations, I should say to her, ‘Good-evening, mademoiselle:  we have both made a little mistake.’”

“But you might be so much in love with her that you could not leave her without being very miserable.”

“I might be very much in love with her, yes; but I would rather go away and be miserable than be humiliated by such a girl.  Why do you smile, madame?  Do you think I am vain, or that I am too young to know anything about that?  Perhaps both are true, but one cannot help thinking.”

“Well,” said Sheila, with a grandly maternal air of sympathy and interest, “you must always remember this—­that you have something more important to attend to than merely looking out for a beautiful sweetheart.  That is the fancy of a foolish girl.  You have your profession, and you must become great and famous in that; and then some day, when you meet this beautiful woman and ask her to be your wife, she will be bound to do that, and you will confer honor on her as well as secure happiness to yourself.  Now, if you were to fall in love with some coquettish girl like her you were singing about, you would have no more ambition to become famous, you would lose all interest in everything except her, and she would be able to make you miserable by a single word.  When you have made a name for yourself, and got a good many more years, you will be better able to bear anything that happens to you in your love or in your marriage.”