“every morning to awaken with the thought of something most important to do; work which one loves, lessons with this great, great soul who knows why art is!  The languages for one’s art, the fencing for one’s art, the eating, breathing, dancing, thinking, living for one’s art!  With Josef’s eternal ‘Think it over!  Think it over!’ and Paris with all of its beautiful past!  And there were lonesome days, too, when I felt I could never do it, with sleepless nights of discouragements.  Ah,” she said, the scarlet coming to her cheeks, “I have lived!  It’s a great thing to say that, isn’t it?  But I have lived!  One day, I remember, Josef was all fussed up.  It was a horror of a day, and he told me that maybe I would never sing, that my temperament might not do, and I went home with thoughts of suicide and didn’t go back to him for nearly a week.  Then he sent for me.  ‘Where have you been?’ he demanded, fiercely.  ’I am going to give it all up,’ I answered.  And he took me by the shoulders.  ’My God!’ he cried, ‘with a genius like yours, could you give it up?’ ’But you said the last time I was here—­’ I began.  ‘Bah!’ he interrupted, putting his hand on my shoulder, ’you can’t believe a word I say.  I am a great liar.’  And we both cried a little, although, even then, he kept telling me how bad crying was for the voice, and we did some Pagliacci together, just as if nothing had happened.”

“It must have been a wonderful life,” Francis said, a great appreciation in his voice.

“It was; I miss it here—­some, although people are so kind.  And you?” she demanded.  “Tell me about yourself.”

“There is nothing to tell.  Things are just the same with me.  I suppose they will never be much different.”

“Mrs. Lennox told me last winter that you were doing quite wonderful things in business.”

He smiled, but made no explanation.  “Are your engagements arranged as yet, Katrine?” he asked.

“It is probable that I shall sing in St. Petersburg first.  It is what I want most if I sing in public next winter at all.”

There was a pause.

“You have not changed so much as I had thought,” he said, at length.

“More than I show, I am afraid,” she answered.

“Oh,” he returned, “even I can discern some changes.  You are more, if I wanted to be subtly flattering, I should say, you are more beautiful, more of the world in appearance, and I know what the Countess meant when she said you were becoming ‘epic, grand, and homicidal,’ or something like that.”

“How horrible!” she laughed.

“Not at all, only not as I remembered you.”  He spoke the words slowly, against his will and his judgment, and in defiance of taste or conduct, looking up as he did so into eyes which from their first glance, over three years before in the woods in North Carolina, had been able to stir him as no other eyes had ever done.  And it seemed to him as though in that look all conventions were dropped between them.  “You were kind to me then, Katrine.”