When Easter told her of Lehmann's suggestion Madame was amazed. "What! You a chit who only have a a voice and a pretty face to go to Lehmann before you know how to sing? If Lilli heard you once she wouldn't be so generous with her invitation. Why, child, you must stay with me two or three years, then it may be time to think of Isolde. Lilli and her Grünewald villa!" Easter drawled out that she proposed singing for Lehmann after the Christmas holidays so that Lilli wouldn't be buying a pig in a poke. Again, consternation on the part of Ash. Well, if you sing for Lilli suppose we get to work on some Bach. Easter loathed Bach, although she knew that his music was necessary to the formation of a sound vocal style. So she didn't demur, and presently she was delivering an old chorale, accompanying herself, and singing with such tonal richness and exaltation of feeling that the tears came unbidden to the eyes of the veteran teacher. Afterwards she told Stone that the girl was a torment but--a genius. Yes, the word was spoken. Why, she eats the words out of my mouth, cried Madame Frida. She anticipates me. Conceited? Yes. She has a good right to be. At the present rate--she will be singing Wagner in a couple of years ... Alfred, you think she has no temperament? She is bursting with it. When she kicks over the traces, I shouldn't like to be in the coach behind. But sly--selfishly sly. After this psychological diagnosis Madame emitted a sigh of satisfaction. IV Stone still stuck to his post as vis-à-vis to Easter at dinner. But since the return of Ulick the table was too small for three, and, as Ulick couldn't very well be shaken off by Stone--who faintly hoped that Easter entertained the same idea--they had asked Papa Felicé for a larger table and were given a round one in the centre of the room. The Felicés were glad to see that the men were beginning to cluster about the Southern girl. As long as proprieties were outwardly observed no questions were asked in the Maison; they might have proved awkward. Wedding rings did not abound there, yet what a delightful oasis it was in the big, noisy city. A good dinner, cooked by an Alsatian chef, excellent wines, if you cared to order them, and a nice tight little game till any hour you cared to lose your money; it was a proverb in the Maison that Yankee guile, no matter the cards, could not prevail against the skill of the patron and his urbane wife. In sooth, it seldom did. Stone played when in funds and always cursed the house, his luck, when he lost. Ulick didn't know how to play cards, or, indeed, any games indoor or out-door. He agreed with Huysmans, who wrote that a monument should be erected to the memory of the inventor of playing cards, for had he not done something toward the suppression of free-speech among imbeciles? He forgot the women, said Ulick. They always gabble, even on their death bed.