shaking his head over the
departed candidate.

"Ugly and ignorant!" he groaned. "Poor creature! Poor, poor creature.
She makes three dollars a week--in a factory owned by a great
philanthropist. Three dollars a week. And she has no way to make a
cent more. Miss Gower, they talk about the sad, naughty girls who sell
themselves in the street to piece out their wages. But think, dear
young lady, how infinitely better of they are than the ugly ones who
can't piece out their wages."

There he looked directly at her for the first time. Before she could
grasp the tragic sadness of his idea, he, with the mobility of candid
and highly sensitized natures, shifted from melancholy to gay, for in
looking at her he had caught only the charm of dress, of face, of
arrangement of hair. "What a pleasure!" he exclaimed, bursting into
smiles and seizing and kissing her gloved hands. "Voice like a bird,
face like an angel--only not TOO good, no, not TOO good. But it is so
rare--to look as one sings, to sing as one looks."

For once, compliment, sincere compliment from one whose opinion was
worth while, gave Mildred pain. She burst out with her news: "Signor
Moldini, I've lost my place in the company. My voice has gone back on
me."

Usually Moldini abounded in the consideration of fine natures that have
suffered deeply from lack of consideration. But he was so astounded
that he could only stare stupidly at her, smoothing his long greasy
hair with his thin brown hand.

"It's all my fault; I don't take care of myself," she went on. "I
don't take care of my health. At least, I hope that's it."

"Hope!" he said, suddenly angry.

"Hope so, because if it isn't that, then I've no chance for a career,"
explained she.

He looked at her feet, pointed an uncannily long forefinger at them.
"The crossings and sidewalks are slush--and you, a singer, without
overshoes! Lunacy! Lunacy!"

"I've never worn overshoes?" said Mildred apologetically.

"Don't tell me! I wish not to hear. It makes me--like madness here."
He struck his low sloping brow with his palm. "What vanity! That the
feet may look well to the passing stranger, no overshoes! Rheumatism,
sore throat, colds, pneumonia. Is it not disgusting. If you were a
man I should swear in all the languages I know--which are five,
including Hungarian, and when one swears in Hungarian it is 'going
some,' as you say in America. Yes, it is going quite some."

"I shall wear over