She notes his comment about Carlotta with a slight frown, but he leaves no room for questions and, as she already wants to ask several questions of him later, she decides it best to leave it for now. He seems mildly uncomfortable to be standing in the room with her and, she must admit, it does feel strange. Still, it is an improvement over singing to a faceless angel or a voice behind a mirror.

As instructed, she had worked her way through her breathing exercises and scales until he deemed her ready to move on to some of the more complicated pieces. As she had been in rehearsals for several hours already, her lesson is fairly short, a little less than an hour, so as not to tax her voice though she feels he might have continued to push her had her fatigue from the day not begun to show in her body. Her voice had still been strong enough but he had needed to correct things like posture with increasing frequency.

He had seemed to be less than comfortable standing in her dressing room throughout the lesson and she has no doubt that he plans to take his leave immediately, which will not do. The lesson had always been secondary to having him here, where she can try to engage with him as a person.

“I am going to have some tea. Perhaps...perhaps you would care to join me? I have some lovely biscuits from the pâtisserie just down the Rue Scribe.”