Dick and Esther had now left the broad, park-like square and had turned into a narrower side street adjoining it. Ordinarily any such suggestion concerning Betty would have aroused Esther's immediate interest and protest. However, whatever was now on her mind was troubling her too much for her to pay any real attention to what Dick had just said. So they walked on for another block in silence, until finally Esther spoke in her old timid, hesitating manner, quite unconsciously locking her hands together, as she had on that day, long ago, of her first meeting with Richard Ashton.
"I am sorry to be so stupid and unentertaining. It was good of you to come and look for me," she began apologetically. "I wish I could stop thinking of what troubles me, but somehow I can't. For Betty will insist on my doing a thing that I simply know I shall not be able to do. And I do hate having to argue."
They were still some distance from the German pension where Dick, his mother and sister and Esther were boarding, so the young man did not make haste to continue their conversation, as he and Esther knew each other too intimately to consider silences.
"Look here, Esther," Richard Ashton finally began, "you know that Betty considers me the worst old gray-beard and lecturer on earth. So I am going to be true to my reputation and lecture you. Why do you allow yourself to be so much influenced by Betty? Don't you realize every now and then that you are the older and that the Princess ought to come around to your way of thinking? Why don't you tell her this time that you are right and she is wrong and that you won't hear anything more on the subject that is worrying you."
Esther laughed, swerving suddenly to get a swift view of the earnest face of her companion. How often he had befriended her, ever since those first days of shy misery and rapture when she had made her original appearance in the Ashton home, little realizing then that the Betty whom she already adored was her own sister.
"I am not really afraid of the Princess, you know, Mr. Dick," she replied, laughing and using an odd, old-fashioned title that she had once given him. "The truth is that if you were able to guess what I have on my mind you might also disagree with me. Because in this particular instance there is a possibility that Betty may be right in her judgment and I in the wrong."
They had walked by this time a little distance beyond the crowded portion of the big city. Now the houses were private residences and boarding places. Finally they stopped before a tall yellow building, five stories in height, with red and yellow flowers growing in a narrow strip along its front. Before an open window on the third floor a girl could be seen sitting with a book in her lap. But she must have become at once aware of the presence of the young man and his companion, because the instant that Dr. Ashton's hand touched the door knob, she disappeared.
CHAPTER V
Changes
Dick Ashton's laughing wish that his sister Betty were a little less pretty was not so unreasonable as you might suppose, had you seen her on this particular late June afternoon as she ran down the narrow, ugly hall of the German pension to greet her brother and sister.
She had on a pale blue muslin dress open at the throat with a tiny frill of lace. Her red bronze hair had coppery tones in it as well as pure gold and was parted a little on one side and coiled up in the simplest fashion at the back of her head. The darkness of her lashes and the delicate lines of her brows gave the gray of her eyes a peculiar luster like the shine on old silk. And this afternoon her cheeks were the deep rose color that often accompanies this especial coloring.
She put one arm around Esther, drawing her into their sitting room, while Dick followed them. It was an odd room, a curious mixture of German and American taste and yet not unattractive. The ceiling was high, the furniture heavy and dark, and the walls covered with a flowered yellow paper. But the two girls had removed the paintings of unnatural flowers and fruits that once decorated them, and instead had hung up framed photographs of the famous pictures that had most pleased them in their visits to different art galleries. There was Franz Hals' "Smiling Cavalier" gazing down at them with irresistible camaraderie in his eyes which followed you with their smile no matter in what portion of the room you chanced to be. On an opposite wall hung a Rembrandt painting of an old woman, and further along the magical "Mona Lisa." In all the history of art there is no more fascinating story than that relating to this great picture by Leonardo da Vinci. For the woman who was the original of the picture was a great Italian princess whom many people adored because of her strange beauty. She had scores of lovers of noble blood and lowly, but no one is supposed to have understood the secret of her inscrutable smile, not even the artist who painted it. This picture was first the property of Italy and then carried away to hang for many years in the most celebrated room in the great gallery of the Louvre in Paris. From there it was stolen by an Italian workman, taken back into Italy and later restored to the French Government. But before Mona Lisa's return to her niche in the Louvre she made a kind of triumphal progress through the great cities of her former home, Rome, Florence and Venice. And in each place men, women and little children came flocking in thousands to pay their tribute to beauty. And so for those of us who think of beauty as a passing, an ephemeral thing, there is this lesson of its universal, its eternal quality. For the smile of one woman, dead these hundreds of years, yet fixed by genius on a square of canvas, can still stir the pulses of the world.
Betty happened to be standing under this picture as she helped Esther remove her coat and hat. And though there was nothing mysterious in her youthful, American prettiness, there is always a poignant and appealing quality in all beauty. Esther suddenly leaned over and placing her hands on both her sister's cheeks, kissed her.
"What have you been doing alone all day?" she asked. "Was your mother well enough to go out with you?"
Betty shook her head without replying and, though Esther saw nothing, Dick Ashton had an idea that his sister was merely waiting for a more propitious time for the account of her own day. For she asked immediately after: "What difference in the world does it make, Esther Crippen, what I have been doing? The thing I wish to know this instant is whether Professor Hecksher has asked you to sing at his big concert with his really star singers? And if he has asked you what did you answer?"
"So that was what was worrying you, Esther?" Dick said and walked over to the high window, pretending to look out.
For Esther was beginning to grow as pale and wretched as she had been an hour before and was once more twisting her hands together like an awkward child.
Betty caught her sister's hands, holding them close. "Tell me the truth," she insisted.
First the older girl nodded, as though not trusting herself to speak and then said: "Yes, Professor Hecksher has asked me. He wants me to make my musical début even though I go on studying afterwards. But I can't do it, Betty dear. I wish you and the Professor would both understand. I appreciate his thinking I can sing well enough, but it is not true. I should break down; my voice would fail utterly. Oh, I am sorry I ever came abroad to study. I have been realizing for months and months that my voice is not worth the trouble and expense father and the rest of you have taken. I am simply going to be a disappointment to all of you."
"Esther, you are a great big goose!" Betty exclaimed indignantly. "I thought we ended this discussion last night and you decided to let Professor Hecksher judge whether or not you could sing. One would think he might know, as he is the biggest singing teacher in Berlin. And certainly if you don't sing I shall die of disappointment. And I shall believe that you are ungrateful to father and to – to all of us."
She was obliged to break off, for Esther had left the room.
Then Dick swung around, facing his sister. "Look here, Betty," he began more angrily than she had often heard him speak. "Has it ever occurred to you that you may all be forcing Esther into a life