"So? Well, it does not greatly matter which, my small one. It does not signify so much whether one feels joy or grief, so long as one feels. To feel ... that is to live, and to live is to sing!" Honor sprang up and ran to her and put her arm as far around her as it would go. She was a delicious person to hug, the _Signorina_, warm and soft and smelling faintly of rare and costly scents. "_So?_" said the great singer again. "It is of some comfort, then, to embrace so much of fatness, when your arms ache to feel muscles and hard flesh? There, there, my good small one," she patted her with a puffy and jeweled hand, "I jest, but I rejoice. It is all good for the voice, this." "_Signorina_," said Honor, honestly, "I've told you and told you, but you don't seem to believe me, that I'm only studying to fill up the time until they'll let me marry Jimsy. I love it, of course, and I'll always keep it up, as much as I can without neglecting more important things, but----" "Mother of our Lord," said the Italian, lifting her hands to heaven, "'more important things' says this babe with the voice of gold, who, by the grace of God and my training might one day wake the world!" "More important to _me_," said Honor, firmly. "I know it must seem silly to you, _Signorina_, dear, but if you were in love----" "Mothers of all the holy saints," said the fat woman, lifting her hands again, "when have I not been in love? Have I not had three husbands already, and another even now dawning on the horizon, not to mention--but there, that is not for pink young ears. I will say this to you, small one. Every woman should marry. Every artist _must_ marry. Run home, then, in another year, and wed the young savage, and have done with it. Stay a year with him--two if you like--until there is an infant savage. Then you shall come back and give yourself in earnest to the business of singing." But Honor, scarlet-cheeked, shook her head. "I can't imagine coming back from--from _that_, _Signorina_!" Her eyes envisaged it and the happy color rose and rose in her face. "But I've got a good lesson for you to-day! Shall I begin?" "Begin, then, my good small one," said her teacher indulgently, "and for the rest, we shall see what we shall see!" Honor flung herself into her work as never before, and counted the weeks and days and hours until the time when Jimsy should come to her, and Jimsy, finishing up a sound, triumphant Sophomore year, saw everything through a hazy front drop of his Skipper on the pier at Naples.