have helped me, but that time has gone
for ever."

She said the words slowly, and the weight of despair was on each one.
For she realised that in her case effort had brought forth no lasting
fruit and that endurance had been without avail, and she was
exceedingly sorrowful. For there is a singular vitality in the idea of
public singing or acting when once it has taken root in any nature,
and Denasia had been subject that night to one of its periods of
revival. She had told herself that "she would probably have a thousand
pounds; that she could go to Italy and pay for the best teachers; that
it would please Roland if he knew, if he remembered, for her to do so;
that it would annoy Elizabeth in many ways if she became a singer;
that she would show the world it was possible to sing and act and yet
be in every respect womanly, pure-hearted, and blameless before God
and man."

These and many such ideas had filled her mind at intervals all the way
across the Atlantic, and her passionate renunciation of the stage,
made that miserable day when Roland deserted her, began to lose its
reasonableness and therefore its sense of obligation. After her
interview with Elizabeth, the question of money to carry out such
intentions was practically settled, and she had, therefore, only to
arrive at a positive personal conclusion. Once or twice in her public
career she had received what her heart told her was a just criticism.
It had not been a very flattering one, and Roland had passionately
denied its justice. But she felt that the hour had now come when she
must have the truth and accept the truth.

So she had tested herself by the natural and acquired abilities of the
greatest singer of the day. It was, perhaps, a pitiless standard, but
she felt that her safety demanded its extremity. Her comparisons made
her burn with shame at her own shortcomings. She wondered how Roland
could have been so deceived, how he could have hoped or believed in
her at all. She forgot that circumstances had quite altered Roland's
first intentions, and that in following out his secondary ones less
distinctive talent was sufficient. On their marriage if he had taken
her, as he proposed, to Italy; if the three last restless, miserable
years had been spent in repose, in a favourable climate under fine
instructors, with a happy, satisfied, hopeful affection to stimulate
and support her ambition--ah, then all of Roland's hopes might have
been fulfilled. But lack