voice rang out alone, and trilled and died away to a delicate musical echo, was more to her than the roar of applause that could be heard through the walls and closed doors in the street outside.  To such a moment as that Faustus himself would have cried ‘Stay!’ though the price of satisfied desire were his soul.  And there had been many such moments in Cordova’s life.  They satisfied something much deeper than greedy vanity and stronger than hungry ambition.  Call it what you will, according to the worth you set on such art, it is a longing which only artists feel, and to which only something in themselves can answer.  To listen to perfect music is a feast for gods, but to be the living instrument beyond compare is to be a god oneself.  Of our five senses, sight calls up visions, divine as well as earthly, but hearing alone can link body, mind, and soul with higher things, by the word and by the word made song.  The mere memory of hearing when it is lost is still enough for the ends of genius; for the poet and the composer touch the blind most deeply, perhaps, when other senses do not count at all; but a painter who loses his sight is as helpless in the world of art as a dismasted ship in the middle of the ocean.

Some of these thoughts passed through Margaret’s brain as she stood beside the ventilator with her friend’s new book in her hand, and, although her reflections were not new to her, it was the first time she clearly understood that her life had made two natures out of her original self, and that the two did not always agree.  She felt that she was not halved by the process, but doubled.  She was two women instead of one, and each woman was complete in herself.  She had not found this out by any elaborate self-study, for healthy people do not study themselves.  She simply felt it, and she was sure it was true, because she knew that each of her two selves was able to do, suffer, and enjoy as much as any one woman could.  The one might like what the other disliked and feared, but the contradiction was open and natural, not secret or morbid.  The two women were called respectively Madame Cordova and Miss Donne.  Miss Donne thought Madame Cordova very showy, and much too tolerant of vulgar things and people, if not a little touched with vulgarity herself.  On the other hand, the brilliantly successful Cordova thought Margaret Donne a good girl, but rather silly.  Miss Donne was very fond of Edmund Lushington, the writer, but the Primadonna had a distinct weakness for Constantine Logotheti, the Greek financier who lived in Paris, and who wore too many rubies and diamonds.

On two points, at least, the singer and the modest English girl agreed, for they both detested Rufus Van Torp, and each had positive proof that he was in love with her, if what he felt deserved the name.