Then began an even harder course of training for the girl, a regimen that resembled more the preparation for an acrobat. The instruction was a little complicated by the fact that her rise to favor was very rapid; and there was some danger that the applause she received would make her content with her work too soon. Uncle Pio never exactly beat her, but he resorted to a sarcasm that had terrors of its own. At the close of a performance Camila would return to her dressing room to find Uncle Pio whistling nonchalantly in one corner. She would divine his attitude at once and cry angrily: "Now what is it? Mother of God, Mother of God, what is it now?" "Nothing, little pearl. My little Camila of Camilas, nothing." "There was something you didn't like. Ugly fault-finding thing that you are. Come on now, what was it? Look, I'm ready." "No, little fish. Adorable morning star, I suppose you did as well as you could." The suggestion that she was a limited artist and that certain felicities would be forever closed to her never failed to make Camila frantic. She would burst into tears: "I wish I had never known you. You poison my whole life. You just think I did badly. It pleases you to pretend that I was bad. All right then, be quiet." Uncle Pio went on whistling. "The fact is I know I was weak to-night, and don't need you to tell me so. So there. Now go away. I don't want to see you around. It's hard enough to play that part without coming back and finding you this way." Suddenly Uncle Pio would lean forward and ask with angry intensity: "Why did you take that speech to the prisoner so fast?" More tears from the Perichole: "Oh God, let me die in peace! One day you tell me to go faster and another to go slower. Anyway I shall be crazy in a year or two and then it won't matter." More whistling. "Besides the audience applauded as never before. Do you hear me? _As never before_. There! Too fast or too slow is nothing to them. They wept. I was divine. That's all I care for. Now be silent. Be silent." He was absolutely silent. "You may comb my hair, but if you say another word I shall never play again. You can find some other girl, that's all." Thereupon he would comb her hair soothingly for ten minutes, pretending not to notice the sobs that were shaking her exhausted body. At last she would turn quickly and catching one of his hands would kiss it frantically: "Uncle Pio, was I so bad? Was I a disgrace to you? Was it so awful _that you left the theatre_?" After a long pause Uncle Pio would admit judiciously: "You were good in the scene on the ship." "But I've been better, Uncle Pio. You remember the night you came back from Cuzco----?" "You were pretty good at the close." "Was I?" "But my flower, my pearl, _was the matter in the speech to the prisoner_?"