She closed her eyes, her features sinking into a repose of prayer. “Oh, those notes that came floating from that supreme woman! Golden, perfectly matched, each one a pearl on the perfect string! She stopped on the B flat, and laughed a little at my face. ‘Now I will show you,’ said she, ‘how Nellie Melba pours it forth!’ And that Adelina ran it up and down in just the way I had heard Melba sing it many times. I cannot tell you the difference. Still beautiful, but—it was as if she had taken the bottom away from everything, that second time!” “What did she say when you sang?” Joy asked eagerly, as she came to a pause. The little wren tossed her hands and shoulders, laughing lightly. “The story ends there! I have gotten you to speak! Come—let us see what you have brought. I hope a variety, for I like to choose!” She ran her fingers lightly through the music-roll, pulling out “The Messiah,” to Joy’s horror. She had not dreamed that the heroine of thirty operas, and mistress of the concert stage, would even glance at oratorio. “Behold what is complete in one,” she was saying. “We have everything here, from the dramatics to the dynamics. Come, let us be off!” “I didn’t suppose—this is the hardest thing I ever tried to do—” Joy faltered, following her to the piano. “No matter! You have saved yourself already, in saying ‘tried to do,’ instead of—‘done’!” She modulated into the pastoral symphony, still talking: “This is so cruel! Nearly eighty pages while the soprano sits like a rock! Many have no voice left when their time comes!” She played for Joy to sing through the four first recitatives, then without comment plunged into the “Come Unto Him,” followed by “Rejoice Greatly,” and ending with “I Know That My Redeemer Liveth.” Then she turned on the bench. “We all have fads, which we call convictions,” she said quietly; “and mine is that this music we have just done can show plainly as nothing else, what one has and what one has learned. Now let us have some fun and do some op-era. What can you do?” “Pa hasn’t given me anything but Faust——” “He wouldn’t; I am glad; for I know you have other airs, and I shall wish to see what you have done without Pa, with your own brain and soul-fire. Come, shall we do something so banal you shall have to lend it your own self, lest we remember the hurdy-gurdy?” Joy hesitated, as she had been about to suggest her beloved Louise. “But-terfly!” cried the little wren, and tore a wail of beauty from the keys. So Joy sang Madame Butterfly . . . with a pulse beating in her voice that made the great one turn on the last note and kiss her exultantly. “When I have a new sensation with that song, I am won!” she cried. “And you gave it—why, you little girl—with years before your maiden voice grows into your woman’s voice—you had not only the longing of Butterfly but the longing of all! Do you see what I mean? It is so that the American shop girl could hear you sing it in Italian and weep!”