Happily for him, Margaret helped him unexpectedly.

‘I shall have to see Lady Maud,’ she said, ’and you must either go when she comes or leave with her.  I’m sorry, but you understand, don’t you?’

’Of course.  I’ll go a moment after she comes.  When am I to see you again?  To-morrow?  You are not to sing again this week, are you?’

‘No,’ the Primadonna answered vaguely, ‘I believe not.’

She was thinking of something else.  She was wondering whether Logotheti would wish her to give up the stage, if by any possibility she ever married him, and her thoughts led her on quickly to the consideration of what that would mean, and to asking herself what sort of sacrifice it would really mean to her.  For the recollection of the Elisir d’Amore awoke and began to rankle again just then.

Logotheti did not press her for an answer, but watched her cautiously while her eyes were turned away from him.  At that moment he felt like a tamer who had just succeeded in making a tiger give its paw for the first time, and has not the smallest idea whether the creature will do it again or bite off his head.

She, on her side, being at the moment altogether the artist, was thinking that it would be pleasant to enjoy a few more triumphs, to make the tour of Europe with a company of her own—­which is always the primadonna’s dream as it is the actress’s—­and to leave the stage at twenty-five in a blaze of glory, rather than to risk one more performance of the opera she now hated.  She knew quite well that it was not at all an impossibility.  To please her, and with the expectation of marrying her in six months, Logotheti would cheerfully pay the large forfeit that would be due to Schreiermeyer if she broke her London engagement at the height of the season, and the Greek financier would produce all the ready money necessary for getting together an opera company.  The rest would be child’s play, she was sure, and she would make a triumphant progress through the capitals of Europe which should be remembered for half a century.  After that, said the Primadonna to herself, she would repay her friend all the money he had lent her, and would then decide at her leisure whether she would marry him or not.  For one moment her cynicism would have surprised even Schreiermeyer; the next, the Primadonna herself was ashamed of it, quite independently of what her better self might have thought.

Besides, it was certainly not for his money that her old inclination for Logotheti had begun to grow again.  She could say so, truly enough, and when she felt sure of it she turned her eyes to see his face.