All through the lesson Thea had felt that Harsanyi was restless and abstracted. Before the hour was over, he pushed back his chair and said resolutely1, “I am not in the mood, Miss Kronborg. I have something on my mind, and I must talk to you. When do you intend to go home?”
Thea turned to him in surprise. “The first of June, about. Mr. Larsen will not need me after that, and I have not much money ahead. I shall work hard this summer, though.”
“And to-day is the first of May; May-day.” Harsanyi leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his hands locked between them. “Yes, I must talk to you about something. I have asked Madison Bowers2 to let me bring you to him on Thursday, at your usual lesson-time. He is the best vocal3 teacher in Chicago, and it is time you began to work seriously with your voice.”
Thea’s brow wrinkled. “You mean take lessons of Bowers?”
Harsanyi nodded, without lifting his head.
“But I can’t, Mr. Harsanyi. I haven’t got the time, and, besides—” she blushed and drew her shoulders up stiffly—“besides, I can’t afford to pay two teachers.” Thea felt that she had blurted4 this out in the worst possible way, and she turned back to the keyboard to hide her chagrin5.
“I know that. I don’t mean that you shall pay two teachers. After you go to Bowers you will not need me. I need scarcely tell you that I shan’t be happy at losing you.”
Thea turned to him, hurt and angry. “But I don’t want to go to Bowers. I don’t want to leave you. What’s the matter? Don’t I work hard enough? I’m sure you teach people that don’t try half as hard.”
Harsanyi rose to his feet. “Don’t misunderstand me, Miss Kronborg. You interest me more than any pupil I have. I have been thinking for months about what you ought to do, since that night when you first sang for me.” He walked over to the window, turned, and came toward her again. “I believe that your voice is worth all that you can put into it. I have not come to this decision rashly. I have studied you, and I have become more and more convinced, against my own desires. I cannot make a singer of you, so it was my business to find a man who could. I have even consulted Theodore Thomas about it.”
“But suppose I don’t want to be a singer? I want to study with you. What’s the matter? Do you really think I’ve no talent? Can’t I be a pianist?”
Harsanyi paced up and down the long rug in front of her. “My girl, you are very talented. You could be a pianist, a good one. But the early training of a pianist, such a pianist as you would want to be, must be something tremendous. He must have had no other life than music. At your age he must be the master of his instrument. Nothing can ever take the place of that first training. You know very well that your technique is good, but it is not remarkable6. It will never overtake your intelligence. You have a fine power of work, but you are not by nature a student. You are not by nature, I think, a pianist. You would never find yourself. In the effort to do so, I’m afraid your playing would become warped7, eccentric.” He threw back his head and looked at his pupil intently with that one eye which sometimes seemed to see deeper than any two eyes, as if its singleness gave it privileges. “Oh, I have watched you very carefully, Miss Kronborg. Because you had had so little and had yet done so much for yourself, I had a great wish to help you. I believe that the strongest need of your nature is to find yourself, to emerge AS yourself. Until I heard you sing I wondered how you were to do this, but it has grown clearer to me every day.”
Thea looked away toward the window with hard, narrow eyes. “You mean I can be a singer because I haven’t brains enough to be a pianist.”
“You have brains enough and talent enough. But to do what you will want to do, it takes more than these—it takes vocation8. Now, I think you have vocation, but for the voice, not for the piano. If you knew,”—he stopped and sighed,—“if you knew how fortunate I sometimes think you. With the voice the way is so much shorter, the rewards are more easily won. In your voice I think Nature herself did for you what it would take you many years to do at the piano. Perhaps you were not born in the wrong place after all. Let us talk frankly9 now. We have never done so before, and I have respected your reticence10. What you want more than anything else in the world is to be an artist; is that true?”
She turned her face away from him and looked down at the keyboard. Her answer came in a thickened voice. “Yes, I suppose so.”
“When did you first feel that you wanted to be an artist?”
“I don’t know. There was always—something.”
“Did you never think that you were going to sing?”
“Yes.”
“How long ago was that?”
“Always, until I came to you. It was you who made me want to play piano.” Her voice trembled. “Before, I tried to think I did, but I was pretending.”
Harsanyi reached out and caught the hand that was hanging at her side. He pressed it as if to give her something. “Can’t you see, my dear girl, that was only because I happened to be the first artist you have ever known? If I had been a trombone player, it would have been the same; you would have wanted to play trombone. But all the while you have been working with such good-will, something has been struggling against me. See, here we were, you and I and this instrument,”—he tapped the piano,—“three good friends, working so............