She would sing to someone who cared to hear her, and to someone who would make her care to sing, which was far more important.
She would sing to the master-carpenter.

Though he had not asked her to go with him--only to meet in a secret place in the hills--she meant to do so, just as she once meant to marry Jean Jacques, and had done so.

It was true she would probably not have married Jean Jacques, if it had not been for the wreck of the Antoine; but the wreck had occurred, and she had married him, and that was done and over so far as she was concerned.
She had determined to go away with the master-carpenter, and though he might feel the same hesitation as that which Jean Jacques had shown--she had read her Norman aright aboard the Antoine--yet, still, George Masson should take her away.

A catastrophe had thrown Jean Jacques into her arms; it would not be a catastrophe which would throw the master-carpenter into her arms.

It would be that they wanted each other.
The mirror gave her a look of dominance--was it her regular features and her classic head?
Does beauty in itself express authority, just because it has the transcendent thing in it?
Does the perfect form convey something of the same thing that physical force--an army in arms, a battleship--conveys?
In any case it was there, that inherent masterfulness, though not in its highest form.