At first she was incredulous. Then,
she hoped against hope that time would prove them wrong and that the
lost voice would return some day even better and richer than it was
before. Now, all her hopes are gone, all her delusions swept away. She
knows she will never sing again, and here in her hand she holds the
cable message which forms the last in this series of dire misfortunes
which have come upon her within the last two years. It is the message
which tells her that her investments have failed and that she is
penniless.
She sits by her window in the June twilight, the numbness of despair
taking possession of her. On the table lies all the money she owns in
the world. It is sufficient to cover the few bills she owes, the salary
of the woman who has traveled with her as maid and companion, and pay
her passage back to her native land. But what then? America once
reached, where can she go, to whom can she turn? The distant relatives,
the friends who crowded around her in her days of success, anxiously
seeking a smile, a word, a token of her favor, how will they receive her
if she goes to them a pauper, a dependent upon their charity? There is
no one to whom she can turn, no place to which she can go, and as the
twilight deepens a heavier blackness settles upon the soul of the girl.
Presently the sound of music breaks in on the evening stillness, the
sound of an organ responding to the touch of skilled fingers and blended
with it the tones of women's voices.
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