"I'm not," she lied.
There was a bunch light on the stage, a dirty backdrop of Corinthian
pillars and esplanade and no wings, one or two stage hands moving about,
and finally a concert grand piano dragged down.
Suddenly Lilly recognized Auchinloss. He was standing just outside the
pool of light that flowed over the piano, the unforgetable outline of
his shaggy head, joined by two little peninsulas of sideburns to the
heavy spade of beard, gray now and not the sooty black she remembered.
The odor of that little room up on Amsterdam Avenue came winding back.
Millie du Gass, the supreme soprano of two continents--dead now, of
heartbreak, some said; Alma, in her plaid-silk waist and the
bookkeeper's curve to her back. That walk across the parlor floor--
"There's Auchinloss now," said Bruce.
She did not reply, but sat with her handkerchief against her mouth and
crowded breathing.
There were three auditions.
A high-bosomed young woman with a powerful mezzo soprano that pulled her
mouth to a rhomboid sang Santuzza's famous aria from "Cavalleria
Rusticana," stopping suddenly to some unseen signal.
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