The reference to the canary was not, indeed, made in the presence of Tina, for the Maestro found that it was not acceptable. Nevertheless, a strange fellowship and affection was springing up between these two. The critics complained that the Signorina varied her notes; but, in fact, the score of the opera never remained the same--at least as regarded her parts. As she sang, with the Maestro beside her at the harpsichord, imagination and recollection, instructed by the magic of sound, touched her notes with an unconscious pathos and revealed to her master, with his ready pencil in one hand and the other on the keys, fresh heights and depths of cultured harmony, new combinations of fluttering, melodious notes. This copartnership, this action and reaction, had something wonderful and charming about it; the power of nature in the girl's voice suggesting possibilities of more melodious, more artistic pathos to the composer, the girl's passionate instinct recognising the touch, and confessing the help, of the master's skill. It seems a strange duet, yet I do not know that we should think it strange. The girl's nature, pure and loving, was supremely moved by the discovery of this power of realisation and expression which it had obtained; but at times it frightened her. "I hate all this," she would cry sometimes, starting away from the harpsichord; "they are dead and cold, and I sing!" "Sing! _mia cara!_" the old man would say, with, for him, a soft and kindly tone; "you cannot help but sing: and when did love and sorrow feel so near and real to you as when, just now, you sang that phrase in F minor?" "It is wicked!" said the girl; but she sang over again, to the perfect satisfaction of her master, the phrase in F minor. "It is true," she said, after a pause. "I knew not how to love--I knew not what love was till I learned to sing from you. Every day I learn more what love is; I feel every hour more able to love--I love you more and more for teaching me the art of love." "Ah, _mia cara_," said the Maestro, "that was not difficult! You were born with that gift. But it is strange to me, I confess it, how pathetically you sing. It is not in the music--at any rate, not in my music. It is beyond my art and even strange to it, but it touches even me." And the old man shrugged his shoulders with an odd gesture, in which something like self-contempt struggled with an unaccustomed emotion. The girl had turned half round, and was looking at him with her bright, yet wistful eyes. "Never mind, Maestro," she said; "I shall love you always for your music, in spite of your contempt of love, and your miserable, cold----" And she gave a little shudder. She was forming, indeed, a passionate regard for the old man, solely for the sake of his art. It was not by any means the first time that such an event had occurred, for unselfish love is much more common than cynical mankind believes. IV.