rcasm, when he suddenly changed his mind. After
all, she was right. It was what she called "the rough" that helped to
make her voice unlike the voices of most women.

"Is that your idea? A good excuse for being lazy! If you don't sing
scales then you must work hard at songs."

"Yes, I know." She put her hands behind her back and leant against the
piano. "There was a man in Paris, a friend of the manager. He heard
me sing once. He knew I wanted to take up a profession, and he offered
to train me for nothing, and bring me out on the stage. I was to sing
those queer, dramatic, half-monotone songs in which one almost _speaks_
the words. He meant to write them specially for me, and I was to wear
an oriental costume. He said that every other voice would sound _fade_
after mine."

Emile glanced at her sharply, but her tone and manner was both
absolutely void of conceit. "Well, why didn't you accept his offer?"

"I don't know. I suppose because it was fated I should come here. He
wanted me to make my _debut_ at the _cafes chantants_, but I didn't
like the idea somehow. He said my voice was only fit for the stage,
and would sound horrible in a room."

Emile twisted his moustache upwards, and his eyebrows climbed in the
same direction. "So! Do you think then that your life at the
Hippodrome is going to be more what you English call respectable, than
the _cafes chantants_?"

"There are the horses here. If I don't like anything else I can always
like them."

Emile decided that the man in Paris had been apt in his judgment of
this fantastic voice. Clever of him also to have noticed that she was
Oriental. The setting of her green eyes was of the East. And horses
were the only things she cared about--so far. Like most people whose
lives are a complicated tangle of plots, Emile was not particularly
interested in animals. His life, thoughts and environment were morbid,
and the dumb creation too normal and healthy to appeal greatly to him.
He discovered that his pupil was able to play in much the same
inconsistent fashion that she sang. With a beautiful touch, full of
temperament and expression, she possessed a profound ignorance of the
rudiments of music. She could not read the notes, she said, but she
could copy anything he played if she heard it two or three times.
Emile found her astonishingly intelligent as well as amiable, and
though the music lessons were not conducted on scientific principles,
th