He turned away with a smile on his lips, a smile that his eyes belied, and she watched him walk to the corner through the same sort of driving rain that now pelted in gray lines against her window.

She shook herself impatiently out of that retrospect.  It was done.  Life, as her brother had prophesied, was no kid-glove affair.  The future was her chief concern now, not the past.  Yet that immediate past, bits of it, would now and then blaze vividly before her mental vision.  The only defense against that lay in action, in something to occupy her mind and hands.  If that motive, the desire to shun mental reflexes that brought pain, were not sufficient, there was the equally potent necessity to earn her bread.  Never again would she be any man’s dependent, a pampered doll, a parasite trading on her sex.  They were hard names she called herself.

Meantime she had not been idle; neither had she come to Seattle on a blind impulse.  She knew of a singing teacher there whose reputation was more than local, a vocal authority whose word carried weight far beyond Puget Sound.  First she meant to see him, get an impartial estimate of the value of her voice, of the training she would need.  Through him she hoped to get in touch with some outlet for the only talent she possessed.  And she had received more encouragement than she dared hope.  He listened to her sing, then tested the range and flexibility of her voice.

“Amazing,” he said frankly.  “You have a rare natural endowment.  If you have the determination and the sense of dramatic values that musical discipline will give you, you should go far.  You should find your place in opera.”

“That’s my ambition,” Stella answered.  “But that requires time and training.  And that means money.  I have to earn it.”

The upshot of that conversation was an appointment to meet the manager of a photoplay house, who wanted a singer.  Stella looked at her watch now, and rose to go.  Money, always money, if one wanted to get anywhere, she reflected cynically.  No wonder men struggled desperately for that token of power.

She reached the Charteris Theater, and a doorman gave her access to the dim interior.  There was a light in the operator’s cage high at the rear, another shaded glow at the piano, where a young man with hair brushed sleekly back chewed gum incessantly while he practiced picture accompaniments.  The place looked desolate, with its empty seats, its bald stage front with the empty picture screen.  Stella sat down to wait for the manager.  He came in a few minutes; his manner was very curt, business-like.  He wanted her to sing a popular song, a bit from a Verdi opera, Gounod’s Ave Maria, so that he could get a line on what she could do.  He appeared to be a pessimist in regard to singers.

“Take the stage right there,” he instructed.  “Just as if the spot was on you.  Now then.”