Marna made no answer at all, but Mrs. Barsaloux saw her settle down in the deep chair in which she was sitting as if to huddle away from the storm about to break over her.

“She isn’t going to offer any resistance,” thought the distressed patron with dismay.  “Her mind is completely made up and she’s just crouching down to wait till I’m through with my private little hurricane.”

So, indeed, it proved.  Mrs. Barsaloux felt she had the right to say much, and she said it.  Marna may or may not have listened.  She sat shivering and smiling in her chair, and when it was fit for her to excuse herself, she did, and walked out bravely; but Mrs. Barsaloux noticed that she tottered a little as she reached the door.  She did not go to her aid, however.

“It’s an infatuation,” she concluded.  “I must treat her as if she had a violent disease and take care of her.  When people are delirious they must be protected against themselves.  It’s a delirium with her, and the best thing I can do is to run off to New York with her.  She can make her next appearance when the opera company gets there.  I’ll arrange it this afternoon.”

She refrained from telling Marna of her plans, but she went straight to the city and talked over the situation with her friend the impresario.  He seemed anything but depressed.  On the contrary, he was excited—­even exalted.

“Spirit her away, madam,” he advised.  “Of course she will miss her lover horribly, and that will be the best thing that can happen to her.  Why did not the public rise to her the other night?  Not because she could not sing:  far from it.  If a nightingale sings, then Miss Cartan does.  But she left her audience a little cold.  Let us face the facts.  You saw it.  We all saw it.  And why?  Because she was too happy, madam; too complaisant; too uninstructed in the emotions.  Now it will be different.  We will take her away; we will be patient with her while she suffers; afterward she will bless us, for she will have discovered the secret of the artist, and then when she opens her little silver throat we shall have SONG.”

Mrs. Barsaloux, with many compunctions, and with some pangs of pure motherly sympathy, nevertheless agreed.

“If only he had been a man above the average,” she said, as she tearfully parted from the great man, “perhaps it would not have mattered so much.”

The impresario lifted his eyebrows and his mustaches at the same time and assumed the aspect of a benevolent Mephistopheles.

“The variety of man, madam,” he said sententiously, “makes no manner of difference.  It is the tumult in Miss Marna’s soul which I hope we shall be able to utilize”—­he interrupted himself with a smile and a bow as he opened the door for his departing friend—­“for the purposes of art.”