"I did not pretend to genius," said Gwendolen, still feeling that she might somehow do what Klesmer wanted to represent as impossible. "I only suppose that I might have a little talent--enough to improve."
"I don't deny that," said Klesmer. "If you had been put in the right track some years ago and had worked well you might now have made a public singer, though I don't think your voice would have counted for much in public. For the stage your personal charms and intelligence might then have told without the present drawback of inexperience--lack of discipline--lack of instruction."
Certainly Klesmer seemed cruel, but his feeling was the reverse of cruel. Our speech, even when we are most single-minded, can never take its line absolutely from one impulse; but Klesmer's was, as far as possible, directed by compassion for poor Gwendolen's ignorant eagerness to enter on a course of which he saw all the miserable details with a definiteness which he could not if he would have conveyed to her mind.

"I did not pretend to genius," said Gwendolen, still feeling that she might somehow do what he said was impossible. "I only suppose that I might have a little talent - enough to improve."
"I don't deny that," said Klesmer. "If you had been put in the right track some years ago and had worked well, you might now have made a public singer, though I don't think your voice would have counted for much. For the stage your personal charms and intelligence might then have told."
Klesmer seemed cruel, but his feeling was the reverse of cruel. He was directed by compassion for poor Gwendolen, so ignorantly eager to enter on a course of which he saw all the miserable details.
