se of humour, and passed him at
that, but the other was inflexible. I had to be very dramatic. Peppo was
frightened, and there is no fight in him, anyhow.

"_'Per me tutto e indifferente, Signorina,'_ he kept whimpering. 'Why
should I go without it? I have lost it.'

"'Which?' I screamed. '_Not_ the hat-trunk?'

"'_No, no; mia voce._ It is gone since Ravenna.'

"He thought he had lost his voice somewhere along the way. At last I told
the inspector that I couldn't live without Peppo, and that I would throw
myself into the bay. I took him into my confidence. Of course, when I
found I had to play on that string, I wished I hadn't made the
boy such a spectacle. But ridiculous as he was, I managed to make the
inspector believe that I had kidnapped him, and that he was indispensable
to my happiness. I found that incorruptible official, like most people,
willing to aid one so utterly depraved. I could never have got that boy
out for any proper, reasonable purpose, such as giving him a job or
sending him to school. Well, it's a queer world! But I must cut all that
and get to the Steins.

"That first winter Peppo had no chance at the Opera. There was an iron
ring about him, and my interest in him only made it all the more
difficult. We've become a nest of intrigues down there; worse than the
Scala. Peppo had to scratch along just any way. One evening he came to me
and said he could get an engagement to sing for the grand rich Steins,
but the condition was that I should sing with him. They would pay, oh,
anything! And the fact that I had sung a private engagement with him
would give him other engagements of the same sort. As you know, I
never sing private engagements; but to help the boy along, I consented.

"On the night of the party, Peppo and I went to the house together in a
taxi. My car was ailing. At the hour when the music was about to begin,
the host and hostess appeared at my dressing-room, up-stairs. Isn't he
wonderful? Your description was most inadequate. I never encountered
such restrained, frozen, sculptured vanity. My hostess struck me as
extremely good natured and jolly, though somewhat intimate in her manner.
Her reassuring pats and smiles puzzled me at the time, I remember, when I
didn't know that she had anything in particular to be large-minded and
charitable about. Her husband made known his willingness to conduct me
to the music-room, and we ceremoniously descended a staircase blooming
like the hanging