I felt that he was right, and resumed my position near the window, humming a tune.

“In a week you may put your foot to the ground; you will then no longer have to be carried about like a parcel.”  I spoke in a casual tone.

“Good!” he ejaculated.

“And then our engagement will come to an end, and you will begin to sing again.”

“Ah!” he said contemplatively, after a pause, “sing!”

It seemed as if singing was a different matter.

“Yes,” I repeated, “sing.  You must throw yourself into that.  It will be the best of all tonics.”

“Have I not told you that I should never sing again?”

“Perhaps you have,” I replied; “but I don’t remember.  And even if you have, as you yourself have just said, you are now wiser, less morbid.”

“True!” he murmured.  “Yes, I must sing.  They want me at Chicago.  I will go, and while there I will spread abroad the fame of Carl Foster.”

He smiled gaily, and then his face became meditative and sad.

“My artistic career has never been far away from tragedy,” he said at length.  “It was founded on a tragedy, and not long ago I thought it would end in one.”

I waited in silence, knowing that if he wished to tell me any private history, he would begin of his own accord.

“You are listening, Carl?”

I nodded.  It was growing dusk.

“You remember I pointed out to you the other day the little house in the Rue d’Ostende where my parents lived?”

“Perfectly.”

“That,” he proceeded, using that curiously formal and elaborate English which he must have learned from reading-books, “that was the scene of the tragedy which made me an artist.  I have told you that my father was a schoolmaster.  He was the kindest of men, but he had moods of frightful severity—­moods which subsided as quickly as they arose.  At the age of three, just as I was beginning to talk easily, I became, for a period, subject to fits; and in one of these I lost the power of speech.  I, Alresca, could make no sound; and for seven years that tenor whom in the future people were to call ‘golden-throated,’ and ‘world-famous,’ and ‘unrivalled,’ had no voice.”  He made a deprecatory gesture.  “When I think of it, Carl, I can scarcely believe it—­so strange are the chances of life.  I could hear and understand, but I could not speak.

“Of course, that was forty years ago, and the system of teaching mutes to talk was not then invented, or, at any rate, not generally understood.  So I was known and pitied as the poor dumb boy.  I took pleasure in dumb animals, and had for pets a silver-gray cat, a goat, and a little spaniel.  One afternoon—­I should be about ten years old—­my father came home from his school and sitting down, laid his head on the table and began to cry.  Seeing him cry, I also began to cry; I was acutely sensitive.

“‘What is the matter?’ asked my good mother.