When she sang, it had a gorgeous thrilling ring to
it that made Patricia Devereux, when she heard it, clench her hands and
narrow her eyes. She'd never been taught what to do with it, but then,
for what Galbraith wanted of her she needed no teaching. Her ear was
infallible; let her hear a tune once and she could reproduce it
accurately, squarely up to time, squarely, always, in the middle of the
pitch. When she opened her rather dainty-looking mouth and sang, she
could give you across the footlights the impression that at least four
first-class sopranos were going uncommon strong. She hadn't a salient or
commonplace enough sort of beauty to have singled her out from the
chorus and she was no better a dancer than passable. But none of the
girls who would be picked out by a committee of automobile salesmen as
the prettiest and the best dancers in the chorus could sing a note, and
the sextette would have been dumb without her voice.
It was natural enough that Patricia didn't like it. She owed her own
position as a leading light-opera soprano to the cultivation to its
highest possible perfection of a distinctly second-rate voice, to a
precise knowledge of its limitations and to a most scrupulous economy in
its effects.
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