py female was hopelessly in love with him, he sang it with a sort
of laugh that was diabolically irritating. At the present time he
seemed to be in an intermediate state, for he sometimes sang it in the
one way and sometimes in the other, to the despair of the poor foolish
lady in the stalls. The truth was that at irregular intervals he felt
that he was in love with Margaret.

Leading singers are very rarely attracted by each other. Perhaps that
is because they receive such a vast amount of adulation which pleases
them better, and of course there have been famous instances of the
contrary, such as Mario and Grisi. As a rule singers do not meet much
except at the theatre; it is only during rehearsals that they have a
chance of talking, and then, as everybody knows, they show the worst
side of themselves and are often in a very bad temper indeed.

Margaret had not reached that stage yet, for she had met with no
disappointments and could not complain of her manager, and moreover she
was not at all above learning what she could from her fellow-artists.
She was therefore popular with them in spite of the fact that she was a
lady born. They overlooked that, because she could sing, and the tenor
only remembered it when he tried to patronise her a little. He had
often sung with Melba, and she did this or that, and he had sung with
Bonanni and knew exactly how she sang the difficult passages, and he
reeled off the precepts and practice of half-a-dozen other lyric
sopranos, giving Margaret to understand that he was willing and able to
teach her a good deal. But she only smiled kindly, and did precisely
what Madame De Rosa told her to do, seeing that the little Neapolitan
had taught most of them what they knew. It was clear that Margaret
could not be patronised, and the other members of the company liked her
the better for it, because the tenor patronised them all and gave them
to understand that they were rather small fry compared with a man who
could hold the high C and walk off the stage with it.

From the darkness of his lower box Logotheti looked on and approved of
Margaret's behaviour. At the same time he abstracted himself from her
life and saw how she lived with respect to other men and women, and a
great change began to take place in his feelings, one of those changes
which are sometimes salutary because they may hinder an act of folly,
but which humiliate a man in his own eyes, in proportion as they are
unexpected, and