like a
blacksmith."

"What Keith meant," she said. "I wonder-- Why do I catch cold so
easily? Why do I almost always have a slight catch in the throat? Have
you noticed that I nearly always have to clear my throat just a little?"

Her expression held him. He hesitated, tried to evade, gave it up.
"Until that passes, you can never hope to be a thoroughly reliable
singer," said he.

"That is, I can't hope to make a career?"

His silence was assent.

"But I have the voice?"

"You have the voice."

"An unusual voice?"

"Yes, but not so unusual as might be thought. As a matter of fact,
there are thousands of fine voices. The trouble is in reliability. Only
a few are reliable."

She nodded slowly and thoughtfully. "I begin to understand what Mr.
Keith meant," she said. "I begin to see what I have to do, and
how--how impossible it is."

"By no means," declared Jennings. "If I did not think otherwise, I'd
not be giving my time to you."

She looked at him gravely. His eyes shifted, then returned defiantly,
aggressively. She said:

"You can't help me to what I want. So this is my last lesson--for the
present. I may come back some day--when I am ready for what you have
to give."

"You are going to give up?"

"Oh, no--oh, dear me, no," replied she. "I realize that you're
laughing in your sleeve as I say so, because you think I'll never get
anywhere. But you--and Mr. Keith--may be mistaken." She drew from her
muff a piece of music--the "Batti Batti," from "Don Giovanni." "If you
please," said she, "we'll spend the rest of my time in going over this.
I want to be able to sing it as well as possible."

He looked searchingly at her. "If you wish," said he. "But I doubt if
you'll be able to sing at all."

"On the contrary, my cold's entirely gone," replied she. "I had an
exciting evening, I doctored myself before I went to bed, and three or
four times in the night. I found, this morning, that I could sing."

And it was so. Never had she sung better. "Like a true artist!" he
declared with an enthusiasm that had a foundation of sincerity. "You
know, Miss Stevens, you came very near to having that rarest of all
gifts--a naturally placed voice. If you hadn't had singing teachers as
a girl to make you self-conscious and to teach you wrong, you'd have
been a wonder."

"I may get it back," said Mildred.

"That never happens," replied he. "But I can almost do it."

He coached her for half an