This is the last tour, I swear!"

"Then I'm sorry for the 'highway.' I remember when I first heard you in
Pittsburg, long ago. It was a life-line you threw me. It's about one of
the people along your highway that I've come to see you. Whom do you
consider the best teacher for voice in Chicago?"

Mr. Thomas frowned and pulled his heavy mustache. "Let me see; I suppose
on the whole Madison Bowers is the best. He's intelligent, and he had
good training. I don't like him."

Harsanyi nodded. "I thought there was no one else. I don't like him,
either, so I hesitated. But I suppose he must do, for the present."

"Have you found anything promising? One of your own students?"

"Yes, sir. A young Swedish girl from somewhere in Colorado. She is very
talented, and she seems to me to have a remarkable voice."

"High voice?"

"I think it will be; though her low voice has a beautiful quality, very
individual. She has had no instruction in voice at all, and I shrink
from handing her over to anybody; her own instinct about it has been so
good. It is one of those voices that manages itself easily, without
thinning as it goes up; good breathing and perfect relaxation. But she
must have a teacher, of course. There is a break in the middle voice, so
that the voice does not all work together; an unevenness."

Thomas looked up. "So? Curious; that cleft often happens with the
Swedes. Some of their best singers have had it. It always reminds me of
the space you so often see between their front teeth. Is she strong
physically?"

Harsanyi's eye flashed. He lifted his hand before him and clenched it.
"Like a horse, like a tree! Every time I give her a lesson, I lose a
pound. She goes after what she wants."

"Intelligent, you say? Musically intelligent?"

"Yes; but no cultivation whatever. She came to me like a fine young
savage, a book with nothing written in it. That is why I feel the
responsibility of directing her." Harsanyi paused and crushed his soft
gray hat over his knee. "She would interest you, Mr. Thomas," he added
slowly. "She has a quality--very individual."

"Yes; the Scandinavians are apt to have that, too. She can't go to
Germany, I suppose?"

"Not now, at any rate. She is poor."

Thomas frowned again "I don't think Bowers a really first-rate man. He's
too petty to be really first-rate; in his nature, I mean. But I dare say
he's the best you can do, if you can't give her time enough yourself."

Harsanyi waved his