“The theatre-bills?  Well, sit down, Nina, and tell me how you come to be in London.”

She had by this time quite forgiven or forgotten his first dismay on finding her there; and now she took a chair with much quiet complaisance, and sat down, and put her black silk sunshade across her knees.

“It is simple,” she said, and from time to time she regarded him in a very frank and pleased and even affectionate way, as if the old comradeship of the time when they were both studying in Naples was not to be interfered with by the natural timidity of a young and extremely pretty woman coming as a stranger into a strange town.  “You remember Carmela, Leo?  Carmela and her—­her spouse—­they have great good-fortune—­they get a grand prize in the lottery—­then he says, ’Carmeluccia, we will go to Paris—­we will go to Paris, Carmeluccia—­and why not Nina also?’ Very kind, was it not?—­but Andrea is always kind, so also Carmela, to me.  Then I am in Paris.  I say, ’It is not far to London; I go to London; I go to London and see Leo.’  Perhaps I get an engagement—­oh, no, no, no, you shall not laugh!” she broke in—­though it was she herself who was laughing, and not he at all.  “I am improved—­oh, yes, a little—­a little improved—­you remember old Pandiani he always say my voice not bad, but that agilita was for me very difficult.”

He remembered very well; but he also remembered that when he left Naples, Signorina Rossi was laboring away with the most pertinacious assiduity at cavatinas full of runs and scales and fiorituri generally; and he was quite willing to believe that such diligence had met with its due reward.  But when the young lady modestly hinted that she had left her music in the hall below, and would like Leo to hear whether she had not acquired a good deal more of flexibility than her voice used to possess, and when he had fetched the music and taken it to the piano for her, he was not a little surprised to see her select Ambroise Thomas’s “Io son Titania.”  And he was still more astonished when he found her singing this difficult piece of music with a brilliancy, an ease, a verve of execution that he had never dreamed of her being able to reach.

“Brava!  Brava!  Bravissima!—­Well, you have improved, Nina!” he exclaimed.  “And it isn’t only in freedom of production, it is in quality, too, in timbre—­my goodness, your voice has ever so much more volume and power!  Come, now, try some big, dramatic thing—­”

She shook her head.

“No, no, Leo, I know what I do,” she said.  “I shall never have the grand style—­never—­but you think I am improved?  Yes.  Well, now, I sing something else.”

He forgot all about her lack of a chaperon; they were fellow-students again, as in the old days at Naples, when they worked hard (and also played a little), when they comforted each other, and strove to bear with equanimity the grumbling and querulousness of that always-dissatisfied old Pandiani.  Signorina Rossi now sang the Shadow Song from “Dinorah;” then she sang the Jewel Song from “Faust;” she sang “Caro nome” from “Rigoletto,” or anything else that he could suggest; and her runs and shakes and scale passages were delivered with a freedom and precision that again and again called forth his applause.