She was not different from the thousands, from the millions, in this. He had not altogether lost the conviction that she might be made different. Already she was singing too much; her voice would never reach its full measure under these conditions. She would suffer the fate of the countless high-bred colts that are ruined by being raced too young, being denied the right to sound maturity. She should have been out of the life-struggle for years yet; in the country, in the perfect convent of natural life. She had not answered the true call, but meanwhile a call had come; its poison had entered. Bellair saw that the process before him, if any, was to break before building.... If consummate art were used, might not Bessie be helped to conceive the great career? Of course that thought must come first. However, he was far from believing that any art of his could be consummate.... Speaking that night of her new opportunity, he said: “They will rehearse you a great deal--then performances twice a day--and you’re not more than twenty----” “Just twenty----” “You should be forty--before giving your voice so much work----” She laughed. “Forty, I will doubtless be finished. Forty, and before, the fat comes----” “People can forget fat--when a great voice is singing----” “The great voices have sung from children,” she answered. He believed this untrue; at least, he believed that with conservation, a more sumptuous power was attainable. “They have sung naturally perhaps, but not professionally. If they were called into the stress of life very young, any greatness afterward was in spite of the early struggle, not because of it. The voice is an organ that wears out. It is not the same as the character which improves through every test. If you were to spend ten years in study--ten years, not alone in vocal culture, but in life preparation and the culture of happiness----” “I suppose you would have me give up this chance with the _Follies_?” she asked with the control that suggests imminent fracture. “Yes. There is nothing that passes so quickly--as the voice of a season. It is the plaything of a people without memory. If you had ever listened to the best of the light opera singers, in contrast to a really developed talent----” But this was not the way. Bellair finished the sentence vaguely, not with the sharpness of the idea that had come to him. She was nervous and irritable and tired. She was enduring him, much as one endures a brother from the country, for whom allowances must be made; also there was a deeper reason.