hich were to have crowned the days, nights of incalculable
possibilities, were being stolen from her by women for whom she had no
great affection. At first she had been courageous, but the strain of
prolonged uncertainty was telling on her, and her nervous condition did
not improve her larynx. Every morning Miles Creedon looked down her
throat, only to put her off with evasions, to pronounce improvement that
apparently never got her anywhere, to say that tomorrow he might be able
to promise something definite.

Her illness, of course, gave rise to rumours--rumours that she had lost
her voice, that at some time last summer she must have lost her
discretion. Kitty herself was frightened by the way in which this cold
hung on. She had had many sharp illnesses in her life, but always,
before this, she had rallied quickly. Was she beginning to lose her
resiliency? Was she, by any cursed chance, facing a bleak time when she
would have to cherish herself? She protested, as she wandered about her
sunny, many-windowed rooms on the tenth floor, that if she was going to
have to live frugally, she wouldn't live at all. She wouldn't live on any
terms but the very generous ones she had always known. She wasn't going
to hoard her vitality. It must be there when she wanted it, be ready for
any strain she chose to put upon it, let her play fast and loose with it;
and then, if necessary, she would be ill for a while and pay the piper.
But be systematically prudent and parsimonious she would not.

When she attempted to deliver all this to Doctor Creedon, he merely put
his finger on her lips and said they would discuss these things when she
could talk without injuring her throat. He allowed her to see no one
except the Director of the Opera, who did not shine in conversation and
was not apt to set Kitty going. The Director was a glum fellow, indeed,
but during this calamitous time he had tried to be soothing, and he
agreed with Creedon that she must not risk a premature appearance. Kitty
was tormented by a suspicion that he was secretly backing the little
Spanish woman who had sung many of her parts since she had been ill. He
furthered the girl's interests because his wife had a very special
consideration for her, and Madame had that consideration because--But
that was too long and too dreary a story to follow out in one's mind.
Kitty felt a tonsilitis disgust for opera-house politics, which, when she
was in health, she rather enjoyed, bein