oom singer of mediocre
powers.

"I don't want to have a _pretty_ voice!" she broke out, passionately. "I
wouldn't say thank you for it."

And anger having swallowed up her nervousness, she opened her mouth--and
her throat with it this time?--and let out the full powers that were
hidden within her nice big larynx.

When she ceased, Baroni closed the open pages of the song, and turning on
his stool, regarded her for a moment in silence.

"No," he said at last, dispassionately. "It is certainly not a pree-ty
voice."

To Diana's ears there was such a tone of indifference, such an air of
utter finality about the brief speech, that she felt she would have been
eternally grateful now could she only have passed the low standard
demanded by the possession of even a merely "pretty" voice.

"So this is the voice you bring me to cultivate?" continued the
_maestro_. "This that sounds like the rumblings of a subterranean
earthquake? Boom! boo-o-om! Like that, _nicht wahr_?"

Diana crimsoned, and, feeling her knees giving way beneath her, sank into
the nearest chair, while Baroni continued to stare at her.

"Then--then you cannot take me as a pupil?" she said faintly.

Apparently he did not hear her, for he asked abruptly:--

"Are you prepared to give up everything--everything in the world for art?
She is no easy task-mistress, remember! She will want a great deal of
your time, and she will rob you of your pleasures, and for her sake you
will haf to take care of your body--to guard your physical health--as
though it were the most precious thing on earth. To become a great
singer, a great artiste, means a life of self-denial. Are you prepared
for this?"

"But--but--" stammered Diana in astonishment. "If my voice is not even
pretty--if it is no good--"

"_No good_?" he exclaimed, leaping to his feet with a rapidity of
movement little short of marvellous in a man of his size and bulk.
"_Gran Dio_! No good, did you say? But, my child, you haf a voice of
gold--pure gold. In three years of my training it will become the voice
of the century. Tchut! No good!"

He pranced nimbly to the door and flung it open.

"Giulia! Giulia!" he shouted, and a minute later a fat, amiable-looking
woman, whose likeness to Baroni proclaimed them brother and sister, came
hurrying downstairs in answer to his call. "Signora Evanci, my sister,"
he said, nodding to Diana. "This, Giulia, is a new pupil, and I would
haf you hear he