"Then you can help me, perhaps. Does Lady Holme care for beauty? But she
must. It is impossible that she does not."

"Do you think so? Why?"

"I really cannot reconcile myself to the idea that such performances as
hers are matters of chance."

"They are not. Lady Holme is not a woman who chances things before the
cruel world in which she, you and I live, Sir Donald."

"Exactly. I felt sure of that. Then we come to calculation of effects, to
consideration of that very interesting question--self-consciousness in
art."

"Do you feel that Lady Holme is self-conscious when she is singing?"

"No. And that is just the point. She must, I suppose, have studied till
she has reached that last stage of accomplishment in which the
self-consciousness present is so perfectly concealed that it seems to be
eliminated."

"Exactly. She has an absolute command over her means."

"One cannot deny it. No musician could contest it. But the question that
interests me lies behind all this. There is more than accomplishment in
her performance. There is temperament, there is mind, there is emotion
and complete understanding. I am scarcely speaking strongly enough in
saying complete--perhaps infinitely subtle would be nearer the mark. What
do you say?"