o other life than music. At your
age he must be the master of his instrument. Nothing can ever take the
place of that first training. You know very well that your technique is
good, but it is not remarkable. It will never overtake your
intelligence. You have a fine power of work, but you are not by nature a
student. You are not by nature, I think, a pianist. You would never find
yourself. In the effort to do so, I'm afraid your playing would become
warped, eccentric." He threw back his head and looked at his pupil
intently with that one eye which sometimes seemed to see deeper than any
two eyes, as if its singleness gave it privileges. "Oh, I have watched
you very carefully, Miss Kronborg. Because you had had so little and had
yet done so much for yourself, I had a great wish to help you. I believe
that the strongest need of your nature is to find yourself, to emerge AS
yourself. Until I heard you sing I wondered how you were to do this, but
it has grown clearer to me every day."

Thea looked away toward the window with hard, narrow eyes. "You mean I
can be a singer because I haven't brains enough to be a pianist."

"You have brains enough and talent enough. But to do what you will want
to do, it takes more than these--it takes vocation. Now, I think you
have vocation, but for the voice, not for the piano. If you knew,"--he
stopped and sighed,--"if you knew how fortunate I sometimes think you.
With the voice the way is so much shorter, the rewards are more easily
won. In your voice I think Nature herself did for you what it would take
you many years to do at the piano. Perhaps you were not born in the
wrong place after all. Let us talk frankly now. We have never done so
before, and I have respected your reticence. What you want more than
anything else in the world is to be an artist; is that true?"

She turned her face away from him and looked down at the keyboard. Her
answer came in a thickened voice. "Yes, I suppose so."

"When did you first feel that you wanted to be an artist?"

"I don't know. There was always--something."

"Did you never think that you were going to sing?"

"Yes."

"How long ago was that?"

"Always, until I came to you. It was you who made me want to play
piano." Her voice trembled. "Before, I tried to think I did, but I was
pretending."

Harsanyi reached out and caught the hand that was hanging at her side.
He pressed it as if to give her something. "Can't you see, my dear girl,
that w