Bee-gin, please: '_In all humility I worship thee_.'" Obediently the young man opened his mouth, and in a magnificent baritone voice declaimed that reverently, and from a great way off, he ventured to worship at his beloved's shrine, while Diana listened spell-bound.
If this were the only sort of voice Baroni condescended to train, what chance had she?
And the young man's singing seemed so finished, the fervour of his passion was so vehemently rendered, that she humbly wondered that there still remained anything for him to learn.

It was almost like listening to a professional.
Quite suddenly Baroni dropped his hands from the piano and surveyed the singer with such an eloquent mixture of disgust and bitter contempt in his extraordinarily expressive eyes that Diana positively jumped.
"Ach! So that is your idea of a humble suitor, is it ?" he said, and though he never raised his voice above the rather husky, whispering tones that seemed habitual to him, it cut like a lash.

Later, Diana was to learn that Baroni's most scathing criticisms and most furious reproofs were always delivered in a low, half-whispering tone that fairly seared the victim.

"That is your idea, then--to shout, and yell, and bellow your love like a caged bull?
When will you learn that music is not noise, and that love--love"-- and the odd, husky voice thrilled suddenly to a note as soft and tender as the cooing of a wood-pigeon--"can be expressed _piano_--ah, but _pianissimo_--as well as by blowing great blasts of sound from those leathern bellows which you call your lungs ?" The too-forceful baritone stood abashed, shifting uneasily from one foot to the other.

With a swift motion Baroni swept up the music from the piano and shovelled it pell-mell into the young man's arms.
"Oh, go away, go away!" he said impatiently.