"At times there is a voice with perfect pitch, a true art and range;
not many--they are cold. At times there is a singer with great heart,
sympathy ... mostly too sweet.
"But once, maybe, in fifty, sixty years, both are together. You are
that--I make you amends."
The rain pounded fantastically on the roof a few inches above Harry
Baggs' head and the water seeped coldly through his battered shoes;
but, in the violent rebirth of the vague glow he had lost a short while
before, he gave no heed to his bodily discomfort. "A supreme barytone!"
The walls of the hut, the hollow, dissolved before the sudden light of
hope that enveloped him; all the dim dreams, the unformulated
aspirations on which subconsciously his spirit had subsisted, returned.
"Can you be sure?" he demanded uncertainly.
"Absolutely! You are an artist, and life has wrung you out like a
cloth--jail, hungry, outcast; yes, and nights with stars, and water
shining; men like old Janin, dead men, begging on the roads--they are
all in your voice, jumbled--serious barytone----" The high thin recital
stopped, from exhaustion.
Harry Baggs was warm to the ends of his fingers. He wiped his wet brow
with a wetter hand.
"That's fine," he said impotently; "fine!"
He could hear French Janin breathing stertorously; and, suddenly aware
of the other's age, the misery of their situation, he asked:
"Don't you feel good?"
"I've been worse and better," he replied.
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