“Certain curves!” I burst out.  “Why, you’re the most beautiful creature I ever saw!”

“There!” she cried.  “That’s just how they all talk.  I do hate it.”

“Do you?” I said.  “Then I’ll never call you beautiful again.  But I should have thought you were fairly happy.”

“I’m happy when I’m singing well,” she answered—­“only then.  I like singing.  I like to see an audience moved.  I must sing.  Singing is my life.  But do you know what that means?  That means that I belong to the public, and so I can’t hide myself.  That means that I am always—­always—­surrounded by ‘admirers.’”

“Well?”

“Well, I don’t like them.  I don’t like any of them.  And I don’t like them in the mass.  Why can’t I just sing, and then belong simply to myself?  They are for ever there, my ‘admirers.’  Men of wealth, men of talent, men of adventure, men of wits—­all devoted, all respectful, all ready to marry me.  Some honorable, according to the accepted standard, others probably dishonorable.  And there is not one but whose real desire is to own me.  I know them.  Love!  In my world, peculiar in that world in which I live, there is no such thing as love—­only a showy imitation.  Yes, they think they love me.  ’When we are married you will not sing any more; you will be mine then,’ says one.  That is what he imagines is love.  And others would have me for the gold-mine that is in my throat.  I can read their greed in their faces.”

Her candid bitterness surprised as much as it charmed me.

“Aren’t you a little hard on them?” I ventured.

“Now, am I?” she retorted.  “Don’t be a hypocrite.  Am I?”

I said nothing.

“You know perfectly well I’m not,” she answered for me.

“But I admire you,” I said.

“You’re different,” she replied.  “You don’t belong to my world.  That’s what pleases me in you.  You haven’t got that silly air of always being ready to lay down your life for me.  You didn’t come in this morning with a bunch of expensive orchids, and beg that I should deign to accept them.”  She pointed to various bouquets in the room.  “You just came in and shook hands, and asked me how I was.”

“I never thought of bringing any flowers,” I said awkwardly.

“Just so.  That’s the point.  That’s what I like.  If there is one thing that I can’t tolerate, and that I have to tolerate, it’s ‘attentions,’ especially from people who copy their deportment from Russian Archdukes.”

“There are Archdukes?”

“Why! the air is thick with them.  Why do men think that a woman is flattered by their ridiculous ‘attentions?’ If they knew how sometimes I can scarcely keep from laughing!  There are moments when I would give anything to be back again in the days when I knew no one more distinguished than a concierge.  There was more sincerity at my disposal then.”

“But surely all distinguished people are not insincere?”