She could cook nothing in her room, for she had no pots—not even a kettle. It was a new and disagreeable experience to Monica to have to go to a public place and choose every bite that she ate, and she quickly came to dread it. She tried to reach Peggy Stamper at the Three Arts Club, but she had gone, leaving no address.

By the end of the second week she had a cold, and could barely repress panic about money. There had been no word from Mr Boykin. Every day, after the tenth day, she had told herself that she would call him on the telephone, or go to Plough Court to find him, but she did not do so, and knew, in her heart, that she was afraid. After all, what assurance had she that Jodrell and Stanhope would really do anything for her? Perhaps there had been some change in the situation in Canada; perhaps the Bridgetower Trust had collapsed, or changed its mind; perhaps, owing to one of those muddles about dollar and sterling currency, of which she had vaguely heard, it had proved impossible to get any money to England to support her; perhaps—this was when the cold had taken a turn for the worse—they had forgotten about her, or decided that she would not do, and would disclaim any knowledge of her if she went to see them.

Meanwhile she had made quite a hole in her reserve fund of twenty pounds. Eating was horribly expensive, and she tried to economize by bringing things to her rooms in bags, and eating them there. But this diet of apples and buns brought her no comfort. The cold—feverish and wretched, now, in spite of innumerable shillings pushed into the maw of the gas-meter—the raw damp of a London winter, and the peculiar London smell were wearing her down. She began to have spells of crying at night. And then, as the third week wore on, she dared not cry, because letting down the barriers of her courage in any way brought such horrible speculations, and tumbled her into such abysses of loneliness, that she could not sleep, but lay in her bed for hours, trembling and staring into the darkness. The charm of having her own establishment had utterly worn off, and her two bare rooms echoed hollowly.

She did not pray, for as War and Peace seemed to have lost its magic in crossing the ocean, so did the religion of the Thirteeners. That blatant, narrow faith could not be hitched to anything in her present situation; never, in this strange land, did she hear anyone speak in a voice which suggested the aggressive certainty of Pastor Beamis.

Yet she continued to write home, once a week, saying nothing of her misery and her fears. She was, she told her family, waiting to begin her studies; meanwhile she was seeing something of London.

What was the good of complaining to them? What could they do? And would they not be likely to say that it was just what they expected? Had they not, right up until the last minute, expressed doubt about the whole venture, which only the thought of the easy money kept from bursting into outright contempt? She was outside the range of her religion, and outside the range of her family. Whatever was to come, she must meet it alone.

If nothing had happened by the end of the coming week, she would get a job. Probably it would have to be dish-washing, or something of that sort; so much an outcast did she now feel that she could not conceive of getting the sort of clerical work she had done at home. In time—perhaps in two or three years—she would be able to scrape up enough money to go home, if the disgrace were not too great. Monica Gall, who was taken in by that crooked Bridgetower crowd—who had the nerve to think she could sing!

By this time her cold was much worse, and she had an ugly sore on her upper lip.

But on the Tuesday of the fourth week, Mrs Merry hooted refinedly up the stair-well that she was wanted on the telephone. It was Mr Boykin.

“Well, Miss Gall, how is it going?” said he. “Hope you didn’t think we’d forgotten all about you? Ha ha. Takes a little time to get an answer from Canada. But we now have the go-ahead on the extra furniture for you, and Mr Andrews suggests that I go with you to one of the second-hand shops in King’s Road and see what we can do. Would this afternoon be convenient? Sure you’ve nothing else on? Very well; perhaps you’ll make a sort of tentative list of what you’ll be wanting. Oh, and Sir Benedict is now back from Manchester, and he says we may as well have the piano sent around at once, as you’ll be wanting one. And he can see you next Friday at three-thirty, if you’ve nothing else to do at that time. His house is in Dean’s Yard, Westminster. I’d be very punctual, if I were you; he’s put off someone else in order to fit you in. ‘Til this afternoon then.”

“Why do you want to be a singer?” said Sir Benedict.

Monica blushed, and held a handkerchief to the coldsore on her lip. “I’m sorry to waste your time like this,” said she; “it’s just that I’ve such an awful cold I can hardly make a sound. I’m awfully sorry.”

“Oh, I didn’t mean that. Of course you’re terribly roopy; I just wanted to remind myself of what you sound like. But what I meant was, what’s behind all this? Here you are, and these people in Canada are prepared to spend a great deal of money on your teaching. Is there something special about you? Why do you want to sing?”

“I want to be an artist.”

“Why?”

“Well—because it’s a fine thing to be.”

“Why?”

“Because—because it makes you a fine person, and you can help people.”

“How?”

“You bring great music to them. You sort of—enrich their lives, and make them better.”

“Why do you want to do that?”

“It’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?”

“I really don’t know. Is it?”

“Well that’s what art is for, isn’t it? To make people better? I mean, you give people art, and it raises them up, and they see things differently, and it—it sort of—”

“I don’t want to put words into your mouth, but perhaps you are trying to say that it refines them.”

“Well; yes, really.”

“Has it refined and enriched you?”

“I don’t know.”

“You’re not sure?”

“I’m not very good at it, yet.”

“But you think you’ll be good at it if you have instruction?”

“Yes. I mean—well, yes.”

“Why?”

“I hope I have some talent.”

“Don’t you know?”

“It’s not a thing you can very well say about yourself.”

“Why?”

“Well—it sounds like blowing your own horn.”

“And why shouldn’t you blow your own horn?”

“You’re not supposed to.”

“You mean that you have travelled three thousand miles, at the expense of these people in your home town, to study singing under my guidance, and yet you think it indelicate to tell me, of all people, that you have talent.”

“It’s really for you to decide that, isn’t it?”

“Partly. But you ought to know yourself.”

“Well then, I think I have talent. And I want to sing more than anything else in the world.”

“That’s better. But I wonder if you’ll think that when you’re fifty. It’s a dog’s life, you know, even if you do well at it. But there; you see you’ve got me talking silly now. Every old hand tells every novice that a life in music is a dog’s life. It’s not really true. If you’re a musician that’s all there is to it; there’s no real life for you apart from it. Now listen: I haven’t been bullying you like this just for fun: I’ve been trying to find out what you’re up to. All I know at present is that you have a pretty fair little voice—good enough among several hundred others just as good. What training will do still remains to be seen. But unless you have some honest appraisal of yourself you haven’t much chance. And all that appears now is that you think you have some talent, and are bashful about saying so: you want to sing, with some vague notion of benefiting mankind in general, and raising people a little above the mire of total depravity in which God has placed them. What do you want out of it for yourself?”