ing."

She dropped to a chair.

"Take the book, and go over the same thing, sitting," said he.

She began to remove her wraps.

"Just as you are," he commanded. "Try to forget yourself. Try to
forget me. Try to forget what a brute I am, and what a wonderful
singer you are. Just open your mouth and throw the notes out."

She was rosy with rage. She was reckless. She sang. At the end of
three pages he stopped her with an enthusiastic hand-clapping. "Good!
Good!" he cried. "I'll take you. I'll make a singer of you. Yes, yes,
there's something to work on."

The door opened. A tall, thin woman with many jewels and a superb fur
wrap came gliding in. Jennings looked at the clock. The hands pointed
to eleven. Said he to Mildred:

"Take that book with you. Practice what you've done to-day. Learn to
keep your mouth open. We'll go into that further next time." He was
holding the door open for her. As she passed out, she heard him say:

"Ah, Mrs. Roswell. We'll go at that third song first."

The door closed. Reviewing all that had occurred, Mildred decided that
she must revise her opinion of Jennings. A money-maker he no doubt
was. And why not? Did he not have to live? But a teacher also, and a
great teacher. Had he not destroyed her vanity at one blow, demolished
it?--yet without discouraging her. And he went straight to the bottom
of things--very different from any of the teachers she used to have
when she was posing in drawing-rooms as a person with a voice equal to
the most difficult opera, if only she weren't a lady and therefore not
forced to be a professional singing person. Yes, a great teacher--and
in deadly earnest. He would permit no trifling! How she would have to
work!

And she went to work with an energy she would not have believed she
possessed. He instructed her minutely in how to stand, in how to
breathe, in how to open her mouth and keep it open, in how to relax her
throat and leave it relaxed. He filled every second of her half-hour;
she had never before realized how much time half an hour was, how use
could be made of every one of its eighteen hundred seconds. She went
to hear other teachers give lessons, and she understood why Jennings
could get such prices, could treat his pupils as he saw fit. She
became an extravagant admirer of him as a teacher, thought him a
genius, felt confident that he would make a great singer of her. With
the second lesson she began to pro