“Everybody envied me my success,” she said. “There were those who said I owed everything to _him_, that he made my voice and my style. Lies, madame, black and bitter lies. I won all the prizes at the Conservatoire. He was one master among many. I owed him nothing—nothing—nothing!” She reiterated the word with acrid emphasis, and an angry furl of her fan. “Ah, now you are beginning the old strain!” said the doctor, with a good-humoured shrug of his shoulders. “If this goes on there shall be no piano for you to-day. I will have no grievances; grievances are the bane of social intercourse. If you come to my _salon_ it must be to sing, not to reopen old sores. We all have our wounds as well as you, signorina, but we keep them covered up.” “I am dumb,” said the singer meekly. They went into the doctor’s private sitting-room. Three sides of the room were lined with books, chiefly of a professional or scientific character. A cottage piano stood in a recess by the fireplace. The woman flew to the instrument with a rapturous eagerness, and began to play. Her hands were faintly tremulous with excitement, but her touch was that of a master as she played the symphony to the finale of “La Cenerentola.” “Has she no piano in her own room?” asked Mildred in a whisper. “No, poor soul. She is one of our pauper patients. The State provides for her, but it does not give her a private room or a piano. I let her come here two or three times a week for an hour or so, when she is reasonable.” Mildred wondered if it would be possible for her, as a stranger, to provide a room and a piano for this friendless enthusiast. She would have been glad out of her abundance to have lightened a suffering sister’s fate, and she determined to make the proposition to the doctor. The singer played snatches of familiar music—Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini—operatic airs which Mildred knew by heart. She wandered from one scena to another, and her voice, though it had lost its sweetness and sustaining power, was still brilliantly flexible. She sang with a rapturous unconsciousness of her audience, Mildred and the doctor sitting quietly at each side of the hearth, where a single pine log smouldered on the iron dogs above a heap of white ashes. Presently the music changed to a gayer, lighter strain, and she began an airy cavatina, all coquetry and grace. That joyous melody was curiously familiar to Mildred’s ear. “Where did I hear that music?” she said aloud. “It seems as if it were only the other day, and yet it is nearly two years since I was at the opera.” The singer left the cavatina unfinished, and wandered into another melody. “Ah, I know now!” exclaimed Mildred; “that is Paolo Castellani’s music!” The woman started up from the piano as if the name had wounded her. “Paolo Castellani!” she cried. “What do you know of Paolo Castellani?” Dr. Leroy went over to her, and laid his hand upon her shoulder heavily.