lowing happiness did the rest. She sang as she had not sung
before.

'I wish to embrace you!' cried Madame Bonanni, when they had finished.

And forthwith Margaret felt herself enveloped in the Turkish bath-gown,
and entangled in the towzled hair and held by a pair of tremendously
strong white arms; and being thus helpless, she experienced a kindly
but portentous kiss on each cheek; after which she was set at liberty.

'You are a real musician, too!' Madame Bonanni said with genuine
admiration. 'You can play anything, as well as sing. I hope you will
never hear me play. It is awful. I could empty any theatre instantly,
if there were a fire, merely by playing a little!'

She laughed heartily at her little joke, for like many great singers
she was half a child and half a genius, and endowed with the huge
vitality that alone makes an opera singer's life possible.

'I would give my playing to have your voice,' Margaret said.

'You would be cheated in your bargain,' observed Madame Bonanni. 'Let
me look at you. Have you a big chest and a thick throat? What are your
arms like? If you have a voice and talent, strength is every thing!
Young girls come and sing to me so prettily, so sweetly! They want to
be singers! Singers, my dear, with chests like paper dolls and throats
like plucked spring chickens! Bah! They are good for nothing, they
catch cold, they give a little croak and they die. Strength is
everything. Let me see your throat! No! You will never croak! You will
never die. And your arms? Look at mine. Yes, yours will be like mine,
some day.'

Margaret hoped not, for Madame Bonanni seemed to be a very big woman,
though she still managed to look human as Juliet. Perhaps that was
because the tenors were all fat.

Again a hand emerged from the thick white folds and grasped Margaret's
arm firmly above the elbow, as a trainer feels an athlete's biceps.

'Good, good! Very good!' cried Madame Bonanni approvingly. 'It is a
pity you are a lady! You are a lady, aren't you?'

Margaret smiled.

'I am a peasant,' the singer answered without the least affectation. 'I
always say that it takes five generations of life in the fields to make
a voice. But you are English, I suppose. Yes? All English live out of
doors. If they had a proper climate they would all sing, but they have
to keep their mouths shut all the time, to keep out the rain, and the
fog, and the smoke of their chimneys. It is incredible, how little they
open t