"But do not be frightened, my dear.

You haf a pree-ty face; if your voice is as pree-ty as your face you need not haf fear." Diana was furious with herself for failing at the critical moment, and even more angry at Baroni's speech, in which she sensed a suggestion of the tolerance extended to the average drawing-room singer of mediocre powers.
"I don't want to have a _pretty_ voice!" she broke out, passionately.

"I wouldn't say thank you for it." And anger having swallowed up her nervousness, she opened her mouth--and her throat with it this time ?--and let out the full powers that were hidden within her nice big larynx.
When she ceased, Baroni closed the open pages of the song, and turning on his stool, regarded her for a moment in silence.
"No," he said at last, dispassionately.

"It is certainly not a pree-ty voice." To Diana's ears there was such a tone of indifference, such an air of utter finality about the brief speech, that she felt she would have been eternally grateful now could she only have passed the low standard demanded by the possession of even a merely "pretty" voice.
"So this is the voice you bring me to cultivate ?" continued the _maestro_.

"This that sounds like the rumblings of a subterranean earthquake?
Boom! boo-o-om! Like that, _nicht wahr_ ?" Diana crimsoned, and, feeling her knees giving way beneath her, sank into the nearest chair, while Baroni continued to stare at her.
"Then--then you cannot take me as a pupil ?" she said faintly.
Apparently he did not hear her, for he asked abruptly:-- "Are you prepared to give up everything--everything in the world for art?
She is no easy task-mistress, remember! She will want a great deal of your time, and she will rob you of your pleasures, and for her sake you will haf to take care of your body--to guard your physical health--as though it were the most precious thing on earth.