“You say you are doing well in everything except French and Italian?”

Dolly, still humming to her own accompaniment, looked over her shoulder and nodded.

“Well, how the dickens are you ever going to sing at either Opera or on the road or anywhere if you don’t learn French and Italian?”

“I’m trying, Louis.”

“Go ahead; let’s hear something, then.”

And she sang very intelligently and in excellent taste: 

    “Pendant que, plein d’amour, j’expire a votre porte,
    Vous dormez d’un paisible sommeil—­”

and turned questioningly to him.

“That’s all right; try another.”

So, serenely obedient, she sang: 

    “Chantons Margot, nos amours,
    Margot leste et bien tournee—­”

“Well, I don’t see anything the matter with your French,” he muttered.

The girl coloured with pleasure, resting pensively above the key-board; but he had no further requests to make and presently she swung around on the piano-stool, looking at him.

“You sing all right; you are doing your part—­as far as I can discover.”

“There is nothing for you to discover that I have not told you,” she said gravely.  In her manner there was a subdued dignity which he had noticed recently—­something of the self-confidence of the very young and unspoiled—­which, considering all things, he could not exactly account for.

“Does that doddering old dancing-master of yours behave himself?”

“Yes—­since you spoke to him.  Mr. Bulder came to the school again.”

“What did you say to him?”

“I told him that you wouldn’t let me sing in ‘The Inca.’”

“And what did Bulder say?”

“He was persistent but perfectly respectful; asked if he might confer with you.  He wrote to you I think, didn’t he?”

Malcourt nodded and lighted a cigarette.

“Dolly,” he said, “do you want to sing Chaske in ‘The Inca’ next winter?”

“Yes, I do—­if you think it is all right.”  She added in a low voice:  “I want to do what will please you, Louis.”

“I don’t know whether it’s the best thing to do, but—­you may have to.”  He laid his cigarette in a saucer, watched the smoke curling ceilingward, and said as though to himself: 

“I should like to be certain that you can support yourself—­within a reasonable time from now—­say a year.  That is all, Dolly.”

“I can do it now if you wish it—­” The expression of his face checked her.

“I don’t mean a variety career devoted to ‘mother’ songs,” he said with a sneer.  “There’s a middle course between diamonds and ‘sinkers.’  You’ll get there if you don’t kick over the traces....  Have you made any more friends?”

“Yes.”

“Are they respectable?”

“Yes,” she said, colouring.

“Has anybody been impertinent?”

“Mr. Williams.”