"You were thinking of something else," he said, his brow clearing a little. "_Na!_ it comes so sometimes. Something has happened to distract your attention. The amiable Miss Hallam has been a little _more_ amiable than usual."
"Well, well. _'S ist mir egal._ But now, as you have wasted half an hour in vanity and vexation, will you be good enough to let your thoughts return here to me and to your duty? or else--I must go, and leave the lesson till you are in the right voice again."
"I am all right--try me," said I, my pride rising in arms as I thought of Courvoisier's behavior a short time ago.
"Very well. Now. You are Eva, please remember, the first woman, and you have gone wrong. Think of who is questioning you, and--"
He began the accompaniment, and I sung for the fifth time Eva's scattered notes of shame and excuse.
"Brava!" said he, when I had finished, and I was the more startled as he had never before given me the faintest sign of approval, but had found such constant fault with me that I usually had a fit of weeping after my lesson; weeping with rage and disappointment at my own shortcomings.
"At last you know what it means," said he. "I always told you your forte was dramatic singing."
"It may be called an oratorio, but it is a drama all the same. What more dramatic, for instance, than what you have just sung, and all that goes before? Now suppose we go on. I will take Adam."
Having given myself up to the music, I sung my best with earnestness. When we had finished von Francius closed the book, looked at me, and said:
"Will you sing the 'Eva' music at the concert?"
He bowed silently, and still kept his eyes fixed upon my face, as if to say, "Refuse if you dare."
"I--I'm afraid I should make such a mess of it," I murmured at last.
"Oh! but all the people!" said I, expostulating; "it is so different."
He gave a little laugh of some amusement.
"How odd! and yet how like you!" said he. "Do you suppose that the people who will be at the concert will be half as much alive to your defects as I am? If you can sing before me, surely you can sing before so many rows of--"
"Cabbages? I wish I could think they were."
"Nonsense! What would be the use, where the pleasure, in singing to cabbages? I mean simply inhabitants of Elberthal. What can there be so formidable about them?"