"_Writing?_" she echoed, with limitless scorn. "I don't care _that_ about writing. It just does to fill in. But the way she behaves about the _Comet_ is just a sample. I really thought she was getting to be more liberal-minded. It's a long time since we've had a terrible scene like this; but it just shows you." She turned away and strode up and down. "The only thing she ever let me do was to take drawing lessons; and the only thing she ever took my part about was in defending me from learning cooking. But do you think _I_ ever had piano lessons? No! Do you think _I've_ ever had a private singing lesson in my life? No! Do you know what that means to me? No--because the piano's kept locked, or else I'm made to sing as if I were ashamed of myself, and you haven't a notion that I've got a voice that would make a singer's fortune. Now, have you?" "N--no." "Course not. How should you?" "I suppose," he said, "they naturally don't want you to face the hardships of--" "As if we didn't face hardships at home. Have you any notion how poor we are? I don't mean holes in the kitchen and rain through the roof--who cares about that? We're so poor"--she advanced upon him step by step--"that we can't have proper clothes, we can't have proper fires, and, except when you're here, we don't have proper food. And me with a voice of gold!--so people say. What's the good of a voice of gold with a grandmother like that?" She pointed a shaking finger of scorn in the direction of the long room. A black face was put shyly in at the opposite door. "Here's Venus to set the table." Val tumbled down from her climax and stalked miserably out. Ethan followed her. "Come to the drawing-room," he whispered, in the passage. "Parlor, I suppose you mean." "Yes, parlor." "What for?" "We can talk there." They pushed open the door. "She's left the key!" cried Val, springing towards the piano. "So she has," he admitted, with less enthusiasm. "That's for _your_ sake. Cousin Ethan, you could try my voice if you liked." "Of course," he said, with misgiving. How was he to let her down from the dizzy height of her illusion without hurting her cruelly or stultifying himself? The voice that had joined in "Maid of Athens" had been so unremarkable, he could not recall anything about it save that, unwillingly, she had sung. She opened the piano. He saw with pitying amusement how her fingers shook upon the ancient rosewood. "I am a mezzo-soprano," she said. "I'll show you my range first." And she proceeded to do so, her voice as shaky at the beginning as her hands, but steadying itself on the second note, rising slowly, with a kind of conscious pride, swelling audaciously rich, mounting higher and clearer, leaping at the top notes like some spirit of delight sounding silver trumpets to the sun. Ethan stood staring when she finished. "Either something's wrong with my ears, or else you _have_ got a wonderful voice!" "Oh, cousin Ethan, cousin Ethan!"