The Song of the Lark Chapter 1-11 by Willa Cather

PART VI

KRONBORG

It is a glorious winter day. Denver, standing on her
high plateau under a thrilling green-blue sky, is masked
in snow and glittering with sunlight. The Capitol building
is actually in armor, and throws off the shafts of the sun
until the beholder is dazzled and the outlines of the building
are lost in a blaze of reflected light. The stone terrace is a
white field over which fiery reflections dance, and the trees
and bushes are faithfully repeated in snow--on every
black twig a soft, blurred line of white. From the terrace
one looks directly over to where the mountains break in
their sharp, familiar lines against the sky. Snow fills the
gorges, hangs in scarfs on the great slopes, and on the peaks
the fiery sunshine is gathered up as by a burning-glass.

Howard Archie is standing at the window of his private
room in the offices of the San Felipe Mining Company, on
the sixth floor of the Raton Building, looking off at the
mountain glories of his State while he gives dictation to his
secretary. He is ten years older than when we saw him last,
and emphatically ten years more prosperous. A decade of
coming into things has not so much aged him as it has forti-
fied, smoothed, and assured him. His sandy hair and
imperial conceal whatever gray they harbor. He has not
grown heavier, but more flexible, and his massive shoulders
carry fifty years and the control of his great mining inter-
ests more lightly than they carried forty years and a coun-
try practice. In short, he is one of the friends to whom we
feel grateful for having got on in the world, for helping to

keep up the general temperature and our own confidence in
life. He is an acquaintance that one would hurry to over-
take and greet among a hundred. In his warm handshake
and generous smile there is the stimulating cordiality of
good fellows come into good fortune and eager to pass it on;
something that makes one think better of the lottery of
life and resolve to try again.

When Archie had finished his morning mail, he turned
away from the window and faced his secretary. "Did any-
thing come up yesterday afternoon while I was away,
T. B.?"

Thomas Burk turned over the leaf of his calendar.
"Governor Alden sent down to say that he wanted to see
you before he sends his letter to the Board of Pardons.
Asked if you could go over to the State House this morn-
ing."

Archie shrugged his shoulders. "I'll think about it."

The young man grinned.

"Anything else?" his chief continued.

T. B. swung round in his chair with a look of interest on
his shrewd, clean-shaven face. "Old Jasper Flight was in,
Dr. Archie. I never expected to see him alive again. Seems
he's tucked away for the winter with a sister who's a
housekeeper at the Oxford. He's all crippled up with
rheumatism, but as fierce after it as ever. Wants to know
if you or the company won't grub-stake him again. Says
he's sure of it this time; had located something when the
snow shut down on him in December. He wants to crawl
out at the first break in the weather, with that same old
burro with the split ear. He got somebody to winter the
beast for him. He's superstitious about that burro, too;
thinks it's divinely guided. You ought to hear the line of
talk he put up here yesterday; said when he rode in his
carriage, that burro was a-going to ride along with him."

Archie laughed. "Did he leave you his address?"

"He didn't neglect anything," replied the clerk cynically.

"Well, send him a line and tell him to come in again. I
like to hear him. Of all the crazy prospectors I've ever
known, he's the most interesting, because he's really crazy.
It's a religious conviction with him, and with most of 'em
it's a gambling fever or pure vagrancy. But Jasper Flight
believes that the Almighty keeps the secret of the silver
deposits in these hills, and gives it away to the deserving.
He's a downright noble figure. Of course I'll stake him!
As long as he can crawl out in the spring. He and that
burro are a sight together. The beast is nearly as white as
Jasper; must be twenty years old."

"If you stake him this time, you won't have to again,"
said T. B. knowingly. "He'll croak up there, mark my
word. Says he never ties the burro at night now, for fear he
might be called sudden, and the beast would starve. I guess
that animal could eat a lariat rope, all right, and enjoy it."

"I guess if we knew the things those two have eaten, and
haven't eaten, in their time, T. B., it would make us vege-
tarians." The doctor sat down and looked thoughtful.
"That's the way for the old man to go. It would be pretty
hard luck if he had to die in a hospital. I wish he could
turn up something before he cashes in. But his kind seldom
do; they're bewitched. Still, there was Stratton. I've been
meeting Jasper Flight, and his side meat and tin pans, up
in the mountains for years, and I'd miss him. I always
halfway believe the fairy tales he spins me. Old Jasper
Flight," Archie murmured, as if he liked the name or the
picture it called up.

A clerk came in from the outer office and handed Archie
a card. He sprang up and exclaimed, "Mr. Ottenburg?
Bring him in."

Fred Ottenburg entered, clad in a long, fur-lined coat,
holding a checked-cloth hat in his hand, his cheeks and
eyes bright with the outdoor cold. The two men met before
Archie's desk and their handclasp was longer than friend-
ship prompts except in regions where the blood warms and

quickens to meet the dry cold. Under the general keying-
up of the altitude, manners take on a heartiness, a vivacity,
that is one expression of the half-unconscious excitement
which Colorado people miss when they drop into lower
strata of air. The heart, we are told, wears out early in
that high atmosphere, but while it pumps it sends out no
sluggish stream. Our two friends stood gripping each other
by the hand and smiling.

"When did you get in, Fred? And what have you come
for?" Archie gave him a quizzical glance.

"I've come to find out what you think you're doing out
here," the younger man declared emphatically. "I want
to get next, I do. When can you see me?"

"Anything on to-night? Then suppose you dine with
me. Where can I pick you up at five-thirty?"

"Bixby's office, general freight agent of the Burlington."
Ottenburg began to button his overcoat and drew on his
gloves. "I've got to have one shot at you before I go,
Archie. Didn't I tell you Pinky Alden was a cheap squirt?"

Alden's backer laughed and shook his head. "Oh, he's
worse than that, Fred. It isn't polite to mention what he
is, outside of the Arabian Nights. I guessed you'd come
to rub it into me."

Ottenburg paused, his hand on the doorknob, his high
color challenging the doctor's calm. "I'm disgusted with
you, Archie, for training with such a pup. A man of your
experience!"

"Well, he's been an experience," Archie muttered. "I'm
not coy about admitting it, am I?"

Ottenburg flung open the door. "Small credit to you.
Even the women are out for capital and corruption, I hear.
Your Governor's done more for the United Breweries in
six months than I've been able to do in six years. He's the
lily-livered sort we're looking for. Good-morning."

That afternoon at five o'clock Dr. Archie emerged from
the State House after his talk with Governor Alden, and

crossed the terrace under a saffron sky. The snow, beaten
hard, was blue in the dusk; a day of blinding sunlight had
not even started a thaw. The lights of the city twinkled
pale below him in the quivering violet air, and the dome of
the State House behind him was still red with the light
from the west. Before he got into his car, the doctor paused
to look about him at the scene of which he never tired.
Archie lived in his own house on Colfax Avenue, where
he had roomy grounds and a rose garden and a conserva-
tory. His housekeeping was done by three Japanese boys,
devoted and resourceful, who were able to manage Archie's
dinner parties, to see that he kept his engagements, and to
make visitors who stayed at the house so comfortable that
they were always loath to go away.

Archie had never known what comfort was until he
became a widower, though with characteristic delicacy, or
dishonesty, he insisted upon accrediting his peace of mind
to the San Felipe, to Time, to anything but his release from
Mrs. Archie.

Mrs. Archie died just before her husband left Moonstone
and came to Denver to live, six years ago. The poor wo-
man's fight against dust was her undoing at last. One
summer day when she was rubbing the parlor upholstery
with gasoline,--the doctor had often forbidden her to use
it on any account, so that was one of the pleasures she
seized upon in his absence,--an explosion occurred. No-
body ever knew exactly how it happened, for Mrs. Archie
was dead when the neighbors rushed in to save her from the
burning house. She must have inhaled the burning gas and
died instantly.

Moonstone severity relented toward her somewhat after
her death. But even while her old cronies at Mrs. Smiley's
millinery store said that it was a terrible thing, they added
that nothing but a powerful explosive COULD have killed
Mrs. Archie, and that it was only right the doctor should
have a chance.

Archie's past was literally destroyed when his wife died.
The house burned to the ground, and all those material
reminders which have such power over people disappeared
in an hour. His mining interests now took him to Denver
so often that it seemed better to make his headquarters
there. He gave up his practice and left Moonstone for
good. Six months afterward, while Dr. Archie was living
at the Brown Palace Hotel, the San Felipe mine began to
give up that silver hoard which old Captain Harris had
always accused it of concealing, and San Felipe headed the
list of mining quotations in every daily paper, East and
West. In a few years Dr. Archie was a very rich man.
His mine was such an important item in the mineral out-
put of the State, and Archie had a hand in so many of the
new industries of Colorado and New Mexico, that his poli-
tical influence was considerable. He had thrown it all, two
years ago, to the new reform party, and had brought about
the election of a governor of whose conduct he was now
heartily ashamed. His friends believed that Archie himself
had ambitious political plans.

WHEN Ottenburg and his host reached the house on
Colfax Avenue, they went directly to the library,
a long double room on the second floor which Archie had
arranged exactly to his own taste. It was full of books and
mounted specimens of wild game, with a big writing-table
at either end, stiff, old-fashioned engravings, heavy hang-
ings and deep upholstery.

When one of the Japanese boys brought the cocktails,
Fred turned from the fine specimen of peccoray he had
been examining and said, "A man is an owl to live in such
a place alone, Archie. Why don't you marry? As for me,
just because I can't marry, I find the world full of charm-
ing, unattached women, any one of whom I could fit up a
house for with alacrity."

"You're more knowing than I." Archie spoke politely.
"I'm not very wide awake about women. I'd be likely to
pick out one of the uncomfortable ones--and there are a
few of them, you know." He drank his cocktail and rubbed
his hands together in a friendly way. "My friends here
have charming wives, and they don't give me a chance
to get lonely. They are very kind to me, and I have a
great many pleasant friendships."

Fred put down his glass. "Yes, I've always noticed that
women have confidence in you. You have the doctor's way
of getting next. And you enjoy that kind of thing?"

"The friendship of attractive women? Oh, dear, yes!
I depend upon it a great deal."

The butler announced dinner, and the two men went
downstairs to the dining-room. Dr. Archie's dinners were
always good and well served, and his wines were excellent.

"I saw the Fuel and Iron people to-day," Ottenburg said,

looking up from his soup. "Their heart is in the right place.
I can't see why in the mischief you ever got mixed up with
that reform gang, Archie. You've got nothing to reform
out here. The situation has always been as simple as two
and two in Colorado; mostly a matter of a friendly under-
standing."

"Well,"--Archie spoke tolerantly,--"some of the
young fellows seemed to have red-hot convictions, and I
thought it was better to let them try their ideas out."

Ottenburg shrugged his shoulders. "A few dull young
men who haven't ability enough to play the old game the
old way, so they want to put on a new game which doesn't
take so much brains and gives away more advertising
that's what your anti-saloon league and vice commission
amounts to. They provide notoriety for the fellows who
can't distinguish themselves at running a business or prac-
ticing law or developing an industry. Here you have a
mediocre lawyer with no brains and no practice, trying to
get a look-in on something. He comes up with the novel
proposition that the prostitute has a hard time of it, puts
his picture in the paper, and the first thing you know, he's
a celebrity. He gets the rake-off and she's just where she
was before. How could you fall for a mouse-trap like
Pink Alden, Archie?"

Dr. Archie laughed as he began to carve. "Pink seems
to get under your skin. He's not worth talking about.
He's gone his limit. People won't read about his blame-
less life any more. I knew those interviews he gave out
would cook him. They were a last resort. I could have
stopped him, but by that time I'd come to the conclusion
that I'd let the reformers down. I'm not against a general
shaking-up, but the trouble with Pinky's crowd is they
never get beyond a general writing-up. We gave them a
chance to do something, and they just kept on writing
about each other and what temptations they had over-
come."

While Archie and his friend were busy with Colorado
politics, the impeccable Japanese attended swiftly and
intelligently to his duties, and the dinner, as Ottenburg at
last remarked, was worthy of more profitable conversation.

"So it is," the doctor admitted. "Well, we'll go up-
stairs for our coffee and cut this out. Bring up some cognac
and arak, Tai," he added as he rose from the table.

They stopped to examine a moose's head on the stair-
way, and when they reached the library the pine logs in
the fireplace had been lighted, and the coffee was bubbling
before the hearth. Tai placed two chairs before the fire
and brought a tray of cigarettes.

"Bring the cigars in my lower desk drawer, boy," the
doctor directed. "Too much light in here, isn't there,
Fred? Light the lamp there on my desk, Tai." He turned
off the electric glare and settled himself deep into the chair
opposite Ottenburg's.

"To go back to our conversation, doctor," Fred began
while he waited for the first steam to blow off his coffee;
"why don't you make up your mind to go to Washington?
There'd be no fight made against you. I needn't say the
United Breweries would back you. There'd be some KUDOS
coming to us, too; backing a reform candidate."

Dr. Archie measured his length in his chair and thrust
his large boots toward the crackling pitch-pine. He drank
his coffee and lit a big black cigar while his guest looked
over the assortment of cigarettes on the tray. "You say
why don't I," the doctor spoke with the deliberation of a
man in the position of having several courses to choose
from, "but, on the other hand, why should I?" He puffed
away and seemed, through his half-closed eyes, to look
down several long roads with the intention of luxuriously
rejecting all of them and remaining where he was. "I'm
sick of politics. I'm disillusioned about serving my crowd,
and I don't particularly want to serve yours. Nothing in it
that I particularly want; and a man's not effective in poli-

tics unless he wants something for himself, and wants it
hard. I can reach my ends by straighter roads. There are
plenty of things to keep me busy. We haven't begun to
develop our resources in this State; we haven't had a look
in on them yet. That's the only thing that isn't fake--
making men and machines go, and actually turning out a
product."

The doctor poured himself some white cordial and looked
over the little glass into the fire with an expression which
led Ottenburg to believe that he was getting at something
in his own mind. Fred lit a cigarette and let his friend
grope for his idea.

"My boys, here," Archie went on, "have got me rather
interested in Japan. Think I'll go out there in the spring,
and come back the other way, through Siberia. I've always
wanted to go to Russia." His eyes still hunted for some-
thing in his big fireplace. With a slow turn of his head he
brought them back to his guest and fixed them upon him.
"Just now, I'm thinking of running on to New York for
a few weeks," he ended abruptly.

Ottenburg lifted his chin. "Ah!" he exclaimed, as if he
began to see Archie's drift. "Shall you see Thea?"

"Yes." The doctor replenished his cordial glass. "In
fact, I suspect I am going exactly TO see her. I'm getting
stale on things here, Fred. Best people in the world and
always doing things for me. I'm fond of them, too, but
I've been with them too much. I'm getting ill-tempered,
and the first thing I know I'll be hurting people's feelings.
I snapped Mrs. Dandridge up over the telephone this
afternoon when she asked me to go out to Colorado Springs
on Sunday to meet some English people who are staying
at the Antlers. Very nice of her to want me, and I was as
sour as if she'd been trying to work me for something.
I've got to get out for a while, to save my reputation."

To this explanation Ottenburg had not paid much atten-
tion. He seemed to be looking at a fixed point: the yellow

glass eyes of a fine wildcat over one of the bookcases.
"You've never heard her at all, have you?" he asked
reflectively. "Curious, when this is her second season in
New York."

"I was going on last March. Had everything arranged.
And then old Cap Harris thought he could drive his car
and me through a lamp-post and I was laid up with a com-
pound fracture for two months. So I didn't get to see
Thea."

Ottenburg studied the red end of his cigarette attentively.
"She might have come out to see you. I remember you
covered the distance like a streak when she wanted you."

Archie moved uneasily. "Oh, she couldn't do that. She
had to get back to Vienna to work on some new parts for
this year. She sailed two days after the New York season
closed."

"Well, then she couldn't, of course." Fred smoked his
cigarette close and tossed the end into the fire. "I'm tre-
mendously glad you're going now. If you're stale, she'll
jack you up. That's one of her specialties. She got a rise
out of me last December that lasted me all winter."

"Of course," the doctor apologized, "you know so much
more about such things. I'm afraid it will be rather wasted
on me. I'm no judge of music."

"Never mind that." The younger man pulled himself
up in his chair. "She gets it across to people who aren't
judges. That's just what she does." He relapsed into his
former lassitude. "If you were stone deaf, it wouldn't all
be wasted. It's a great deal to watch her. Incidentally,
you know, she is very beautiful. Photographs give you no
idea."

Dr. Archie clasped his large hands under his chin. "Oh,
I'm counting on that. I don't suppose her voice will sound
natural to me. Probably I wouldn't know it."

Ottenburg smiled. "You'll know it, if you ever knew it.
It's the same voice, only more so. You'll know it."

"Did you, in Germany that time, when you wrote me?
Seven years ago, now. That must have been at the very
beginning."

"Yes, somewhere near the beginning. She sang one of
the Rhine daughters." Fred paused and drew himself up
again. "Sure, I knew it from the first note. I'd heard a
good many young voices come up out of the Rhine, but,
by gracious, I hadn't heard one like that!" He fumbled
for another cigarette. "Mahler was conducting that night.
I met him as he was leaving the house and had a word with
him. `Interesting voice you tried out this evening,' I
said. He stopped and smiled. `Miss Kronborg, you mean?
Yes, very. She seems to sing for the idea. Unusual in a
young singer.' I'd never heard him admit before that a
singer could have an idea. She not only had it, but she got
it across. The Rhine music, that I'd known since I was a
boy, was fresh to me, vocalized for the first time. You
realized that she was beginning that long story, adequately,
with the end in view. Every phrase she sang was basic.
She simply WAS the idea of the Rhine music." Ottenburg
rose and stood with his back to the fire. "And at the end,
where you don't see the maidens at all, the same thing
again: two pretty voices AND the Rhine voice." Fred
snapped his fingers and dropped his hand.

The doctor looked up at him enviously. "You see, all
that would be lost on me," he said modestly. "I don't
know the dream nor the interpretation thereof. I'm out of
it. It's too bad that so few of her old friends can appreciate
her."

"Take a try at it," Fred encouraged him. "You'll get
in deeper than you can explain to yourself. People with no
personal interest do that."

"I suppose," said Archie diffidently, "that college Ger-
man, gone to seed, wouldn't help me out much. I used to
be able to make my German patients understand me."

"Sure it would!" cried Ottenburg heartily. "Don't be

above knowing your libretto. That's all very well for
musicians, but common mortals like you and me have got
to know what she's singing about. Get out your dictionary
and go at it as you would at any other proposition. Her
diction is beautiful, and if you know the text you'll get a
great deal. So long as you're going to hear her, get all
that's coming to you. You bet in Germany people know
their librettos by heart! You Americans are so afraid of
stooping to learn anything."

"I AM a little ashamed," Archie admitted. "I guess
that's the way we mask our general ignorance. However,
I'll stoop this time; I'm more ashamed not to be able to
follow her. The papers always say she's such a fine ac-
tress." He took up the tongs and began to rearrange the
logs that had burned through and fallen apart. "I suppose
she has changed a great deal?" he asked absently.

"We've all changed, my dear Archie,--she more than
most of us. Yes, and no. She's all there, only there's a
great deal more of her. I've had only a few words with her
in several years. It's better not, when I'm tied up this
way. The laws are barbarous, Archie."

"Your wife is--still the same?" the doctor asked
sympathetically.

"Absolutely. Hasn't been out of a sanitarium for seven
years now. No prospect of her ever being out, and as long
as she's there I'm tied hand and foot. What does society
get out of such a state of things, I'd like to know, except
a tangle of irregularities? If you want to reform, there's
an opening for you!"

"It's bad, oh, very bad; I agree with you!" Dr. Archie
shook his head. "But there would be complications under
another system, too. The whole question of a young man's
marrying has looked pretty grave to me for a long while.
How have they the courage to keep on doing it? It de-
presses me now to buy wedding presents." For some time
the doctor watched his guest, who was sunk in bitter reflec-

tions. "Such things used to go better than they do now,
I believe. Seems to me all the married people I knew when
I was a boy were happy enough." He paused again and bit
the end off a fresh cigar. "You never saw Thea's mother,
did you, Ottenburg? That's a pity. Mrs. Kronborg was a
fine woman. I've always been afraid Thea made a mistake,
not coming home when Mrs. Kronborg was ill, no matter
what it cost her."

Ottenburg moved about restlessly. "She couldn't,
Archie, she positively couldn't. I felt you never under-
stood that, but I was in Dresden at the time, and though
I wasn't seeing much of her, I could size up the situation
for myself. It was by just a lucky chance that she got to
sing ELIZABETH that time at the Dresden Opera, a complica-
tion of circumstances. If she'd run away, for any reason,
she might have waited years for such a chance to come
again. She gave a wonderful performance and made a
great impression. They offered her certain terms; she had
to take them and follow it up then and there. In that game
you can't lose a single trick. She was ill herself, but she
sang. Her mother was ill, and she sang. No, you mustn't
hold that against her, Archie. She did the right thing
there." Ottenburg drew out his watch. "Hello! I must be
traveling. You hear from her regularly?"

"More or less regularly. She was never much of a letter-
writer. She tells me about her engagements and contracts,
but I know so little about that business that it doesn't
mean much to me beyond the figures, which seem very
impressive. We've had a good deal of business correspond-
ence, about putting up a stone to her father and mother,
and, lately, about her youngest brother, Thor. He is with
me now; he drives my car. To-day he's up at the mine."

Ottenburg, who had picked up his overcoat, dropped it.
"Drives your car?" he asked incredulously.

"Yes. Thea and I have had a good deal of bother about
Thor. We tried a business college, and an engineering

school, but it was no good. Thor was born a chauffeur
before there were cars to drive. He was never good for any-
thing else; lay around home and collected postage stamps
and took bicycles to pieces, waiting for the automobile to
be invented. He's just as much a part of a car as the steer-
ing-gear. I can't find out whether he likes his job with me or
not, or whether he feels any curiosity about his sister. You
can't find anything out from a Kronborg nowadays. The
mother was different."

Fred plunged into his coat. "Well, it's a queer world,
Archie. But you'll think better of it, if you go to New
York. Wish I were going with you. I'll drop in on you
in the morning at about eleven. I want a word with you
about this Interstate Commerce Bill. Good-night."

Dr. Archie saw his guest to the motor which was waiting
below, and then went back to his library, where he replen-

ished the fire and sat down for a long smoke. A man of
Archie's modest and rather credulous nature develops late,
and makes his largest gain between forty and fifty. At
thirty, indeed, as we have seen, Archie was a soft-hearted
boy under a manly exterior, still whistling to keep up his
courage. Prosperity and large responsibilities--above all,
getting free of poor Mrs. Archie--had brought out a good
deal more than he knew was in him. He was thinking to-
night as he sat before the fire, in the comfort he liked so
well, that but for lucky chances, and lucky holes in the
ground, he would still be a country practitioner, reading
his old books by his office lamp. And yet, he was not so
fresh and energetic as he ought to be. He was tired of
business and of politics. Worse than that, he was tired of
the men with whom he had to do and of the women who,
as he said, had been kind to him. He felt as if he were still
hunting for something, like old Jasper Flight. He knew
that this was an unbecoming and ungrateful state of mind,
and he reproached himself for it. But he could not help
wondering why it was that life, even when it gave so much,

after all gave so little. What was it that he had expected
and missed? Why was he, more than he was anything else,
disappointed?

He fell to looking back over his life and asking himself
which years of it he would like to live over again,--just
as they had been,--and they were not many. His college
years he would live again, gladly. After them there was
nothing he would care to repeat until he came to Thea
Kronborg. There had been something stirring about those
years in Moonstone, when he was a restless young man on
the verge of breaking into larger enterprises, and when she
was a restless child on the verge of growing up into some-
thing unknown. He realized now that she had counted for
a great deal more to him than he knew at the time. It was
a continuous sort of relationship. He was always on the
lookout for her as he went about the town, always vaguely
expecting her as he sat in his office at night. He had never
asked himself then if it was strange that he should find a
child of twelve the most interesting and companionable
person in Moonstone. It had seemed a pleasant, natural
kind of solicitude. He explained it then by the fact that
he had no children of his own. But now, as he looked back
at those years, the other interests were faded and inani-
mate. The thought of them was heavy. But wherever his
life had touched Thea Kronborg's, there was still a little
warmth left, a little sparkle. Their friendship seemed to
run over those discontented years like a leafy pattern, still
bright and fresh when the other patterns had faded into
the dull background. Their walks and drives and confi-
dences, the night they watched the rabbit in the moon-
light,--why were these things stirring to remember?
Whenever he thought of them, they were distinctly dif-
ferent from the other memories of his life; always seemed
humorous, gay, with a little thrill of anticipation and mys-
tery about them. They came nearer to being tender secrets
than any others he possessed. Nearer than anything else

they corresponded to what he had hoped to find in the
world, and had not found. It came over him now that the
unexpected favors of fortune, no matter how dazzling, do
not mean very much to us. They may excite or divert us
for a time, but when we look back, the only things we cher-
ish are those which in some way met our original want; the
desire which formed in us in early youth, undirected, and
of its own accord.

III

FOR the first four years after Thea went to Germany
things went on as usual with the Kronborg family.
Mrs. Kronborg's land in Nebraska increased in value and
brought her in a good rental. The family drifted into an
easier way of living, half without realizing it, as families
will. Then Mr. Kronborg, who had never been ill, died sud-
denly of cancer of the liver, and after his death Mrs.
Kronborg went, as her neighbors said, into a decline.
Hearing discouraging reports of her from the physician
who had taken over his practice, Dr. Archie went up from
Denver to see her. He found her in bed, in the room where
he had more than once attended her, a handsome woman
of sixty with a body still firm and white, her hair, faded
now to a very pale primrose, in two thick braids down her
back, her eyes clear and calm. When the doctor arrived,
she was sitting up in her bed, knitting. He felt at once how
glad she was to see him, but he soon gathered that she had
made no determination to get well. She told him, indeed,
that she could not very well get along without Mr. Kron-
borg. The doctor looked at her with astonishment. Was
it possible that she could miss the foolish old man so much?
He reminded her of her children.

"Yes," she replied; "the children are all very well, but
they are not father. We were married young."

The doctor watched her wonderingly as she went on
knitting, thinking how much she looked like Thea. The
difference was one of degree rather than of kind. The
daughter had a compelling enthusiasm, the mother had
none. But their framework, their foundation, was very
much the same.

In a moment Mrs. Kronborg spoke again. "Have you
heard anything from Thea lately?"

During his talk with her, the doctor gathered that what
Mrs. Kronborg really wanted was to see her daughter Thea.
Lying there day after day, she wanted it calmly and con-
tinuously. He told her that, since she felt so, he thought
they might ask Thea to come home.

"I've thought a good deal about it," said Mrs. Kronborg
slowly. "I hate to interrupt her, now that she's begun to
get advancement. I expect she's seen some pretty hard
times, though she was never one to complain. Perhaps
she'd feel that she would like to come. It would be hard,
losing both of us while she's off there."

When Dr. Archie got back to Denver he wrote a long
letter to Thea, explaining her mother's condition and how
much she wished to see her, and asking Thea to come, if
only for a few weeks. Thea had repaid the money she had
borrowed from him, and he assured her that if she hap-
pened to be short of funds for the journey, she had only to
cable him.

A month later he got a frantic sort of reply from Thea.
Complications in the opera at Dresden had given her an
unhoped-for opportunity to go on in a big part. Before this
letter reached the doctor, she would have made her debut
as ELIZABETH, in "Tannhauser." She wanted to go to her
mother more than she wanted anything else in the world,
but, unless she failed,--which she would not,--she abso-
lutely could not leave Dresden for six months. It was not
that she chose to stay; she had to stay--or lose every-
thing. The next few months would put her five years
ahead, or would put her back so far that it would be of no
use to struggle further. As soon as she was free, she would
go to Moonstone and take her mother back to Germany
with her. Her mother, she was sure, could live for years
yet, and she would like German people and German ways,
and could be hearing music all the time. Thea said she was
writing her mother and begging her to help her one last
time; to get strength and to wait for her six months, and

then she (Thea) would do everything. Her mother would
never have to make an effort again.

Dr. Archie went up to Moonstone at once. He had great
confidence in Mrs. Kronborg's power of will, and if Thea's
appeal took hold of her enough, he believed she might
get better. But when he was shown into the familiar room
off the parlor, his heart sank. Mrs. Kronborg was lying
serene and fateful on her pillows. On the dresser at the
foot of her bed there was a large photograph of Thea in the
character in which she was to make her debut. Mrs.
Kronborg pointed to it.

"Isn't she lovely, doctor? It's nice that she hasn't
changed much. I've seen her look like that many a time."

They talked for a while about Thea's good fortune. Mrs.
Kronborg had had a cablegram saying, "First performance
well received. Great relief." In her letter Thea said; "If
you'll only get better, dear mother, there's nothing I can't
do. I will make a really great success, if you'll try with me.
You shall have everything you want, and we will always be
together. I have a little house all picked out where we are
to live."

"Bringing up a family is not all it's cracked up to be,"
said Mrs. Kronborg with a flicker of irony, as she tucked
the letter back under her pillow. "The children you don't
especially need, you have always with you, like the poor.
But the bright ones get away from you. They have their
own way to make in the world. Seems like the brighter
they are, the farther they go. I used to feel sorry that you
had no family, doctor, but maybe you're as well off."

"Thea's plan seems sound to me, Mrs. Kronborg.
There's no reason I can see why you shouldn't pull up
and live for years yet, under proper care. You'd have the
best doctors in the world over there, and it would be won-
derful to live with anybody who looks like that." He
nodded at the photograph of the young woman who must
have been singing "DICH, THEURE HALLE, GRUSS' ICH WIEDER,"

her eyes looking up, her beautiful hands outspread with
pleasure.

Mrs. Kronborg laughed quite cheerfully. "Yes, would
n't it? If father were here, I might rouse myself. But
sometimes it's hard to come back. Or if she were in
trouble, maybe I could rouse myself."

"But, dear Mrs. Kronborg, she is in trouble," her old
friend expostulated. "As she says, she's never needed you
as she needs you now. I make my guess that she's never
begged anybody to help her before."

Mrs. Kronborg smiled. "Yes, it's pretty of her. But
that will pass. When these things happen far away they
don't make such a mark; especially if your hands are full
and you've duties of your own to think about. My own
father died in Nebraska when Gunner was born,--we
were living in Iowa then,--and I was sorry, but the baby
made it up to me. I was father's favorite, too. That's the
way it goes, you see."

The doctor took out Thea's letter to him, and read it over
to Mrs. Kronborg. She seemed to listen, and not to listen.

When he finished, she said thoughtfully: "I'd counted
on hearing her sing again. But I always took my pleasures
as they come. I always enjoyed her singing when she was
here about the house. While she was practicing I often
used to leave my work and sit down in a rocker and give
myself up to it, the same as if I'd been at an entertainment.
I was never one of these housekeepers that let their work
drive them to death. And when she had the Mexicans over
here, I always took it in. First and last,"--she glanced
judicially at the photograph,--"I guess I got about as
much out of Thea's voice as anybody will ever get."

"I guess you did!" the doctor assented heartily; "and I
got a good deal myself. You remember how she used to sing
those Scotch songs for me, and lead us with her head, her
hair bobbing?"

"`Flow Gently, Sweet Afton,'--I can hear it now,"

said Mrs. Kronborg; "and poor father never knew when
he sang sharp! He used to say, `Mother, how do you always
know when they make mistakes practicing?'" Mrs. Kron-
borg chuckled.

Dr. Archie took her hand, still firm like the hand of a
young woman. "It was lucky for her that you did know.
I always thought she got more from you than from any
of her teachers."

"Except Wunsch; he was a real musician," said Mrs.
Kronborg respectfully. "I gave her what chance I could,
in a crowded house. I kept the other children out of the
parlor for her. That was about all I could do. If she wasn't
disturbed, she needed no watching. She went after it like a
terrier after rats from the first, poor child. She was down-
right afraid of it. That's why I always encouraged her
taking Thor off to outlandish places. When she was out of
the house, then she was rid of it."

After they had recalled many pleasant memories to-
gether, Mrs. Kronborg said suddenly: "I always under-
stood about her going off without coming to see us that
time. Oh, I know! You had to keep your own counsel.
You were a good friend to her. I've never forgot that."
She patted the doctor's sleeve and went on absently.
"There was something she didn't want to tell me, and
that's why she didn't come. Something happened when
she was with those people in Mexico. I worried for a good
while, but I guess she's come out of it all right. She'd
had a pretty hard time, scratching along alone like that
when she was so young, and my farms in Nebraska were
down so low that I couldn't help her none. That's no way
to send a girl out. But I guess, whatever there was, she
wouldn't be afraid to tell me now." Mrs. Kronborg
looked up at the photograph with a smile. "She doesn't
look like she was beholding to anybody, does she?"

"She isn't, Mrs. Kronborg. She never has been. That
was why she borrowed the money from me."

"Oh, I knew she'd never have sent for you if she'd done
anything to shame us. She was always proud." Mrs.
Kronborg paused and turned a little on her side. "It's
been quite a satisfaction to you and me, doctor, having
her voice turn out so fine. The things you hope for don't
always turn out like that, by a long sight. As long as old
Mrs. Kohler lived, she used always to translate what it
said about Thea in the German papers she sent. I could
make some of it out myself,--it's not very different from
Swedish,--but it pleased the old lady. She left Thea her
piece-picture of the burning of Moscow. I've got it put
away in moth-balls for her, along with the oboe her grand-
father brought from Sweden. I want her to take father's
oboe back there some day." Mrs. Kronborg paused a
moment and compressed her lips. "But I guess she'll take
a finer instrument than that with her, back to Sweden!"
she added.

Her tone fairly startled the doctor, it was so vibrating
with a fierce, defiant kind of pride he had heard often in
Thea's voice. He looked down wonderingly at his old friend
and patient. After all, one never knew people to the core.
Did she, within her, hide some of that still passion of
which her daughter was all-compact?

"That last summer at home wasn't very nice for her,"
Mrs. Kronborg began as placidly as if the fire had never
leaped up in her. "The other children were acting-up
because they thought I might make a fuss over her and
give her the big-head. We gave her the dare, somehow,
the lot of us, because we couldn't understand her changing
teachers and all that. That's the trouble about giving the
dare to them quiet, unboastful children; you never know
how far it'll take 'em. Well, we ought not to complain,
doctor; she's given us a good deal to think about."

The next time Dr. Archie came to Moonstone, he came
to be a pall-bearer at Mrs. Kronborg's funeral. When he

last looked at her, she was so serene and queenly that he
went back to Denver feeling almost as if he had helped
to bury Thea Kronborg herself. The handsome head in
the coffin seemed to him much more really Thea than did
the radiant young woman in the picture, looking about
at the Gothic vaultings and greeting the Hall of Song.

ONE bright morning late in February Dr. Archie was
breakfasting comfortably at the Waldorf. He had got
into Jersey City on an early train, and a red, windy sunrise
over the North River had given him a good appetite. He
consulted the morning paper while he drank his coffee and
saw that "Lohengrin" was to be sung at the opera that
evening. In the list of the artists who would appear was
the name "Kronborg." Such abruptness rather startled
him. "Kronborg": it was impressive and yet, somehow,
disrespectful; somewhat rude and brazen, on the back page
of the morning paper. After breakfast he went to the hotel
ticket office and asked the girl if she could give him some-
thing for "Lohengrin," "near the front." His manner was
a trifle awkward and he wondered whether the girl noticed
it. Even if she did, of course, she could scarcely suspect.
Before the ticket stand he saw a bunch of blue posters
announcing the opera casts for the week. There was
"Lohengrin," and under it he saw:--

ELSA VON BRABANT . . . . Thea Kronborg.

That looked better. The girl gave him a ticket for a seat
which she said was excellent. He paid for it and went out
to the cabstand. He mentioned to the driver a number on
Riverside Drive and got into a taxi. It would not, of
course, be the right thing to call upon Thea when she was
going to sing in the evening. He knew that much, thank
goodness! Fred Ottenburg had hinted to him that, more
than almost anything else, that would put one in wrong.

When he reached the number to which he directed his
letters, he dismissed the cab and got out for a walk. The

house in which Thea lived was as impersonal as the
Waldorf, and quite as large. It was above 116th Street,
where the Drive narrows, and in front of it the shelving
bank dropped to the North River. As Archie strolled about
the paths which traversed this slope, below the street level,
the fourteen stories of the apartment hotel rose above him
like a perpendicular cliff. He had no idea on which floor
Thea lived, but he reflected, as his eye ran over the many
windows, that the outlook would be fine from any floor.
The forbidding hugeness of the house made him feel as if
he had expected to meet Thea in a crowd and had missed
her. He did not really believe that she was hidden away
behind any of those glittering windows, or that he was to
hear her this evening. His walk was curiously uninspiring
and unsuggestive. Presently remembering that Ottenburg
had encouraged him to study his lesson, he went down to
the opera house and bought a libretto. He had even brought
his old "Adler's German and English" in his trunk, and
after luncheon he settled down in his gilded suite at the
Waldorf with a big cigar and the text of "Lohengrin."

The opera was announced for seven-forty-five, but at
half-past seven Archie took his seat in the right front of the
orchestra circle. He had never been inside the Metropoli-
tan Opera House before, and the height of the audience
room, the rich color, and the sweep of the balconies were
not without their effect upon him. He watched the house
fill with a growing feeling of expectation. When the steel
curtain rose and the men of the orchestra took their places,
he felt distinctly nervous. The burst of applause which
greeted the conductor keyed him still higher. He found
that he had taken off his gloves and twisted them to a
string. When the lights went down and the violins began
the overture, the place looked larger than ever; a great pit,
shadowy and solemn. The whole atmosphere, he reflected,
was somehow more serious than he had anticipated.

After the curtains were drawn back upon the scene beside

the Scheldt, he got readily into the swing of the story. He
was so much interested in the bass who sang KING HENRY
that he had almost forgotten for what he was waiting so
nervously, when the HERALD began in stentorian tones to
summon ELSA VON BRABANT. Then he began to realize that
he was rather frightened. There was a flutter of white at
the back of the stage, and women began to come in: two,
four, six, eight, but not the right one. It flashed across
him that this was something like buck-fever, the paralyz-
ing moment that comes upon a man when his first elk
looks at him through the bushes, under its great antlers;
the moment when a man's mind is so full of shooting that
he forgets the gun in his hand until the buck nods adieu to
him from a distant hill.

All at once, before the buck had left him, she was there.
Yes, unquestionably it was she. Her eyes were downcast,
but the head, the cheeks, the chin--there could be no
mistake; she advanced slowly, as if she were walking in
her sleep. Some one spoke to her; she only inclined her
head. He spoke again, and she bowed her head still lower.
Archie had forgotten his libretto, and he had not counted
upon these long pauses. He had expected her to appear
and sing and reassure him. They seemed to be waiting for
her. Did she ever forget? Why in thunder didn't she--
She made a sound, a faint one. The people on the stage
whispered together and seemed confounded. His nervous-
ness was absurd. She must have done this often before;
she knew her bearings. She made another sound, but he
could make nothing of it. Then the King sang to her, and
Archie began to remember where they were in the story.
She came to the front of the stage, lifted her eyes for the
first time, clasped her hands and began, "EINSAM IN TRUBEN
TAGEN."

Yes, it was exactly like buck-fever. Her face was there,
toward the house now, before his eyes, and he positively
could not see it. She was singing, at last, and he positively

could not hear her. He was conscious of nothing but an
uncomfortable dread and a sense of crushing disappoint-
ment. He had, after all, missed her. Whatever was there,
she was not there--for him.

The King interrupted her. She began again, "IN LICHTER
WAFFEN SCHEINE." Archie did not know when his buck-
fever passed, but presently he found that he was sitting
quietly in a darkened house, not listening to but dreaming
upon a river of silver sound. He felt apart from the others,
drifting alone on the melody, as if he had been alone with it
for a long while and had known it all before. His power of
attention was not great just then, but in so far as it went
he seemed to be looking through an exalted calmness at a
beautiful woman from far away, from another sort of life
and feeling and understanding than his own, who had in her
face something he had known long ago, much brightened
and beautified. As a lad he used to believe that the faces
of people who died were like that in the next world; the
same faces, but shining with the light of a new understand-
ing. No, Ottenburg had not prepared him!

What he felt was admiration and estrangement. The
homely reunion, that he had somehow expected, now
seemed foolish. Instead of feeling proud that he knew her
better than all these people about him, he felt chagrined
at his own ingenuousness. For he did not know her better.
This woman he had never known; she had somehow de-
voured his little friend, as the wolf ate up Red Ridinghood.
Beautiful, radiant, tender as she was, she chilled his old
affection; that sort of feeling was not appropriate. She
seemed much, much farther away from him than she had
seemed all those years when she was in Germany. The
ocean he could cross, but there was something here he
could not cross. There was a moment, when she turned to
the King and smiled that rare, sunrise smile of her child-
hood, when he thought she was coming back to him. After
the HERALD'S second call for her champion, when she knelt

in her impassioned prayer, there was again something
familiar, a kind of wild wonder that she had had the power
to call up long ago. But she merely reminded him of Thea;
this was not the girl herself.

After the tenor came on, the doctor ceased trying to
make the woman before him fit into any of his cherished
recollections. He took her, in so far as he could, for what
she was then and there. When the knight raised the
kneeling girl and put his mailed hand on her hair, when she
lifted to him a face full of worship and passionate humility,
Archie gave up his last reservation. He knew no more
about her than did the hundreds around him, who sat in
the shadow and looked on, as he looked, some with more
understanding, some with less. He knew as much about
ORTRUDE or LOHENGRIN as he knew about ELSA--more, be-
cause she went further than they, she sustained the leg-
endary beauty of her conception more consistently. Even
he could see that. Attitudes, movements, her face, her
white arms and fingers, everything was suffused with a
rosy tenderness, a warm humility, a gracious and yet--
to him--wholly estranging beauty.

During the balcony singing in the second act the doctor's
thoughts were as far away from Moonstone as the singer's
doubtless were. He had begun, indeed, to feel the exhila-
ration of getting free from personalities, of being released
from his own past as well as from Thea Kronborg's. It was
very much, he told himself, like a military funeral, exalting
and impersonal. Something old died in one, and out of it
something new was born. During the duet with ORTRUDE,
and the splendors of the wedding processional, this new
feeling grew and grew. At the end of the act there were
many curtain calls and ELSA acknowledged them, brilliant,
gracious, spirited, with her far-breaking smile; but on the
whole she was harder and more self-contained before the
curtain than she was in the scene behind it. Archie did his
part in the applause that greeted her, but it was the new

and wonderful he applauded, not the old and dear. His
personal, proprietary pride in her was frozen out.

He walked about the house during the ENTR'ACTE, and here
and there among the people in the foyer he caught the
name "Kronborg." On the staircase, in front of the coffee-
room, a long-haired youth with a fat face was discoursing
to a group of old women about "die Kronborg." Dr. Archie
gathered that he had crossed on the boat with her.

After the performance was over, Archie took a taxi and
started for Riverside Drive. He meant to see it through
to-night. When he entered the reception hall of the hotel
before which he had strolled that morning, the hall porter
challenged him. He said he was waiting for Miss Kronborg.
The porter looked at him suspiciously and asked whether
he had an appointment. He answered brazenly that he
had. He was not used to being questioned by hall boys.
Archie sat first in one tapestry chair and then in another,
keeping a sharp eye on the people who came in and went
up in the elevators. He walked about and looked at his
watch. An hour dragged by. No one had come in from the
street now for about twenty minutes, when two women en-
tered, carrying a great many flowers and followed by a tall
young man in chauffeur's uniform. Archie advanced to-
ward the taller of the two women, who was veiled and
carried her head very firmly. He confronted her just as
she reached the elevator. Although he did not stand di-
rectly in her way, something in his attitude compelled her
to stop. She gave him a piercing, defiant glance through
the white scarf that covered her face. Then she lifted her
hand and brushed the scarf back from her head. There
was still black on her brows and lashes. She was very pale
and her face was drawn and deeply lined. She looked, the
doctor told himself with a sinking heart, forty years old.
Her suspicious, mystified stare cleared slowly.

"Pardon me," the doctor murmured, not knowing just
how to address her here before the porters, "I came up

from the opera. I merely wanted to say good-night to
you."

Without speaking, still looking incredulous, she pushed
him into the elevator. She kept her hand on his arm while
the cage shot up, and she looked away from him, frowning,
as if she were trying to remember or realize something.
When the cage stopped, she pushed him out of the elevator
through another door, which a maid opened, into a square
hall. There she sank down on a chair and looked up at
him.

"Why didn't you let me know?" she asked in a hoarse
voice.

Archie heard himself laughing the old, embarrassed
laugh that seldom happened to him now. "Oh, I wanted
to take my chance with you, like anybody else. It's been
so long, now!"

She took his hand through her thick glove and her head
dropped forward. "Yes, it has been long," she said in the
same husky voice, "and so much has happened."

"And you are so tired, and I am a clumsy old fellow to
break in on you to-night," the doctor added sympathetic-
ally. "Forgive me, this time." He bent over and put his
hand soothingly on her shoulder. He felt a strong shudder
run through her from head to foot.

Still bundled in her fur coat as she was, she threw both
arms about him and hugged him. "Oh, Dr. Archie,
DR. ARCHIE,"--she shook him,--"don't let me go. Hold
on, now you're here," she laughed, breaking away from
him at the same moment and sliding out of her fur coat.
She left it for the maid to pick up and pushed the doctor
into the sitting-room, where she turned on the lights. "Let
me LOOK at you. Yes; hands, feet, head, shoulders--just
the same. You've grown no older. You can't say as much
for me, can you?"

She was standing in the middle of the room, in a white
silk shirtwaist and a short black velvet skirt, which some-

how suggested that they had `cut off her petticoats all
round about.' She looked distinctly clipped and plucked.
Her hair was parted in the middle and done very close to
her head, as she had worn it under the wig. She looked
like a fugitive, who had escaped from something in clothes
caught up at hazard. It flashed across Dr. Archie that she
was running away from the other woman down at the
opera house, who had used her hardly.

He took a step toward her. "I can't tell a thing in the
world about you, Thea--if I may still call you that."

She took hold of the collar of his overcoat. "Yes, call
me that. Do: I like to hear it. You frighten me a little,
but I expect I frighten you more. I'm always a scarecrow
after I sing a long part like that--so high, too." She
absently pulled out the handkerchief that protruded from
his breast pocket and began to wipe the black paint off her
eyebrows and lashes. "I can't take you in much to-night,
but I must see you for a little while." She pushed him to a
chair. "I shall be more recognizable to-morrow. You
mustn't think of me as you see me to-night. Come at four
to-morrow afternoon and have tea with me. Can you?
That's good."

She sat down in a low chair beside him and leaned for-
ward, drawing her shoulders together. She seemed to him
inappropriately young and inappropriately old, shorn of
her long tresses at one end and of her long robes at the
other.

"How do you happen to be here?" she asked abruptly.
"How can you leave a silver mine? I couldn't! Sure
nobody'll cheat you? But you can explain everything to-
morrow." She paused. "You remember how you sewed
me up in a poultice, once? I wish you could to-night. I
need a poultice, from top to toe. Something very disagree-
able happened down there. You said you were out front?
Oh, don't say anything about it. I always know exactly
how it goes, unfortunately. I was rotten in the balcony.

I never get that. You didn't notice it? Probably not, but
I did."

Here the maid appeared at the door and her mistress
rose. "My supper? Very well, I'll come. I'd ask you to
stay, doctor, but there wouldn't be enough for two. They
seldom send up enough for one,"--she spoke bitterly.
"I haven't got a sense of you yet,"--turning directly to
Archie again. "You haven't been here. You've only an-
nounced yourself, and told me you are coming to-morrow.
You haven't seen me, either. This is not I. But I'll be
here waiting for you to-morrow, my whole works! Good-
night, till then." She patted him absently on the sleeve
and gave him a little shove toward the door.

WHEN Archie got back to his hotel at two o'clock in
the morning, he found Fred Ottenburg's card under
his door, with a message scribbled across the top: "When
you come in, please call up room 811, this hotel." A mo-
ment later Fred's voice reached him over the telephone.

"That you, Archie? Won't you come up? I'm having
some supper and I'd like company. Late? What does that
matter? I won't keep you long."

Archie dropped his overcoat and set out for room 811.
He found Ottenburg in the act of touching a match to a
chafing-dish, at a table laid for two in his sitting-room.
"I'm catering here," he announced cheerfully. "I let the
waiter off at midnight, after he'd set me up. You'll have
to account for yourself, Archie."

The doctor laughed, pointing to three wine-coolers under
the table. "Are you expecting guests?"

"Yes, two." Ottenburg held up two fingers,--"you,
and my higher self. He's a thirsty boy, and I don't invite
him often. He has been known to give me a headache.
Now, where have you been, Archie, until this shocking
hour?"

"Bah, you've been banting!" the doctor exclaimed,
pulling out his white gloves as he searched for his handker-
chief and throwing them into a chair. Ottenburg was in
evening clothes and very pointed dress shoes. His white
waistcoat, upon which the doctor had fixed a challenging
eye, went down straight from the top button, and he wore
a camelia. He was conspicuously brushed and trimmed
and polished. His smoothly controlled excitement was
wholly different from his usual easy cordiality, though he
had his face, as well as his figure, well in hand. On the

serving-table there was an empty champagne pint and a
glass. He had been having a little starter, the doctor told
himself, and would probably be running on high gear before
he got through. There was even now an air of speed about
him.

"Been, Freddy?"--the doctor at last took up his ques-
tion. "I expect I've been exactly where you have. Why
didn't you tell me you were coming on?"

"I wasn't, Archie." Fred lifted the cover of the chafing-
dish and stirred the contents. He stood behind the table,
holding the lid with his handkerchief. "I had never thought
of such a thing. But Landry, a young chap who plays her
accompaniments and who keeps an eye out for me, tele-
graphed me that Madame Rheinecker had gone to Atlantic
City with a bad throat, and Thea might have a chance to
sing ELSA. She has sung it only twice here before, and I
missed it in Dresden. So I came on. I got in at four this
afternoon and saw you registered, but I thought I would
n't butt in. How lucky you got here just when she was
coming on for this. You couldn't have hit a better time."
Ottenburg stirred the contents of the dish faster and put
in more sherry. "And where have you been since twelve
o'clock, may I ask?"

Archie looked rather self-conscious, as he sat down on a
fragile gilt chair that rocked under him, and stretched out
his long legs. "Well, if you'll believe me, I had the bru-
tality to go to see her. I wanted to identify her. Couldn't
wait."

Ottenburg placed the cover quickly on the chafing-dish
and took a step backward. "You did, old sport? My word!
None but the brave deserve the fair. Well,"--he stooped
to turn the wine,--"and how was she?"

"She seemed rather dazed, and pretty well used up. She
seemed disappointed in herself, and said she hadn't done
herself justice in the balcony scene."

"Well, if she didn't, she's not the first. Beastly stuff to

sing right in there; lies just on the `break' in the voice."
Fred pulled a bottle out of the ice and drew the cork.
Lifting his glass he looked meaningly at Archie. "You
know who, doctor. Here goes!" He drank off his glass
with a sigh of satisfaction. After he had turned the lamp
low under the chafing-dish, he remained standing, looking
pensively down at the food on the table. "Well, she
rather pulled it off! As a backer, you're a winner, Archie.
I congratulate you." Fred poured himself another glass.
"Now you must eat something, and so must I. Here, get
off that bird cage and find a steady chair. This stuff ought
to be rather good; head waiter's suggestion. Smells all
right." He bent over the chafing-dish and began to serve
the contents. "Perfectly innocuous: mushrooms and truf-
fles and a little crab-meat. And now, on the level, Archie,
how did it hit you?"

Archie turned a frank smile to his friend and shook his
head. "It was all miles beyond me, of course, but it gave
me a pulse. The general excitement got hold of me, I sup-
pose. I like your wine, Freddy." He put down his glass.
"It goes to the spot to-night. She WAS all right, then?
You weren't disappointed?"

"Disappointed? My dear Archie, that's the high voice
we dream of; so pure and yet so virile and human. That
combination hardly ever happens with sopranos." Otten-
burg sat down and turned to the doctor, speaking calmly
and trying to dispel his friend's manifest bewilderment.
"You see, Archie, there's the voice itself, so beautiful and
individual, and then there's something else; the thing in it
which responds to every shade of thought and feeling,
spontaneously, almost unconsciously. That color has to
be born in a singer, it can't be acquired; lots of beautiful
voices haven't a vestige of it. It's almost like another
gift--the rarest of all. The voice simply is the mind and
is the heart. It can't go wrong in interpretation, because it
has in it the thing that makes all interpretation. That's

why you feel so sure of her. After you've listened to her
for an hour or so, you aren't afraid of anything. All the
little dreads you have with other artists vanish. You lean
back and you say to yourself, `No, THAT voice will never be-
tray.' TREULICH GEFUHRT, TREULICH BEWACHT."

Archie looked envyingly at Fred's excited, triumphant
face. How satisfactory it must be, he thought, to really
know what she was doing and not to have to take it on
hearsay. He took up his glass with a sigh. "I seem to
need a good deal of cooling off to-night. I'd just as lief
forget the Reform Party for once.

"Yes, Fred," he went on seriously; "I thought it
sounded very beautiful, and I thought she was very
beautiful, too. I never imagined she could be as beautiful
as that."

"Wasn't she? Every attitude a picture, and always the
right kind of picture, full of that legendary, supernatural
thing she gets into it. I never heard the prayer sung like
that before. That look that came in her eyes; it went right
out through the back of the roof. Of course, you get an
ELSA who can look through walls like that, and visions and
Grail-knights happen naturally. She becomes an abbess,
that girl, after LOHENGRIN leaves her. She's made to live
with ideas and enthusiasms, not with a husband." Fred
folded his arms, leaned back in his chair, and began to
sing softly:--

<"In lichter Waffen Scheine,

Ein Ritter nahte da.">

"Doesn't she die, then, at the end?" the doctor asked
guardedly.

Fred smiled, reaching under the table. "Some ELSAS do;
she didn't. She left me with the distinct impression that
she was just beginning. Now, doctor, here's a cold one."
He twirled a napkin smoothly about the green glass, the
cork gave and slipped out with a soft explosion. "And now
we must have another toast. It's up to you, this time."

The doctor watched the agitation in his glass. "The
same," he said without lifting his eyes. "That's good
enough. I can't raise you."

Fred leaned forward, and looked sharply into his face.
"That's the point; how COULD you raise me? Once again!"

"Once again, and always the same!" The doctor put
down his glass. "This doesn't seem to produce any symp-
toms in me to-night." He lit a cigar. "Seriously, Freddy,
I wish I knew more about what she's driving at. It makes
me jealous, when you are so in it and I'm not."

"In it?" Fred started up. "My God, haven't you seen
her this blessed night?--when she'd have kicked any
other man down the elevator shaft, if I know her. Leave
me something; at least what I can pay my five bucks for."

"Seems to me you get a good deal for your five bucks,"
said Archie ruefully. "And that, after all, is what she cares
about,--what people get."

Fred lit a cigarette, took a puff or two, and then threw it
away. He was lounging back in his chair, and his face was
pale and drawn hard by that mood of intense concentration
which lurks under the sunny shallows of the vineyard. In
his voice there was a longer perspective than usual, a slight
remoteness. "You see, Archie, it's all very simple, a natu-
ral development. It's exactly what Mahler said back there
in the beginning, when she sang WOGLINDE. It's the idea,
the basic idea, pulsing behind every bar she sings. She
simplifies a character down to the musical idea it's built on,
and makes everything conform to that. The people who
chatter about her being a great actress don't seem to get
the notion of where SHE gets the notion. It all goes back to
her original endowment, her tremendous musical talent.
Instead of inventing a lot of business and expedients to
suggest character, she knows the thing at the root, and lets
the musical pattern take care of her. The score pours her
into all those lovely postures, makes the light and shadow
go over her face, lifts her and drops her. She lies on it, the

way she used to lie on the Rhine music. Talk about
rhythm!"

The doctor frowned dubiously as a third bottle made its
appearance above the cloth. "Aren't you going in rather
strong?"

Fred laughed. "No, I'm becoming too sober. You see
this is breakfast now; kind of wedding breakfast. I feel
rather weddingish. I don't mind. You know," he went on
as the wine gurgled out, "I was thinking to-night when
they sprung the wedding music, how any fool can have
that stuff played over him when he walks up the aisle with
some dough-faced little hussy who's hooked him. But it
isn't every fellow who can see--well, what we saw to-
night. There are compensations in life, Dr. Howard Archie,
though they come in disguise. Did you notice her when she
came down the stairs? Wonder where she gets that bright-
and-morning star look? Carries to the last row of the
family circle. I moved about all over the house. I'll tell
you a secret, Archie: that carrying power was one of the
first things that put me wise. Noticed it down there in
Arizona, in the open. That, I said, belongs only to the big
ones." Fred got up and began to move rhythmically about
the room, his hands in his pockets. The doctor was aston-
ished at his ease and steadiness, for there were slight lapses
in his speech. "You see, Archie, ELSA isn't a part that's
particularly suited to Thea's voice at all, as I see her voice.
It's over-lyrical for her. She makes it, but there's nothing
in it that fits her like a glove, except, maybe, that long
duet in the third act. There, of course,"--he held out his
hands as if he were measuring something,--"we know
exactly where we are. But wait until they give her a chance
at something that lies properly in her voice, and you'll see
me rosier than I am to-night."

Archie smoothed the tablecloth with his hand. "I am
sure I don't want to see you any rosier, Fred."

Ottenburg threw back his head and laughed. "It's en-

thusiasm, doctor. It's not the wine. I've got as much in-
flated as this for a dozen trashy things: brewers' dinners
and political orgies. You, too, have your extravagances,
Archie. And what I like best in you is this particular
enthusiasm, which is not at all practical or sensible, which
is downright Quixotic. You are not altogether what you
seem, and you have your reservations. Living among the
wolves, you have not become one. LUPIBUS VIVENDI NON
LUPUS SUM."

The doctor seemed embarrassed. "I was just thinking
how tired she looked, plucked of all her fine feathers, while
we get all the fun. Instead of sitting here carousing, we
ought to go solemnly to bed."

"I get your idea." Ottenburg crossed to the window and
threw it open. "Fine night outside; a hag of a moon just
setting. It begins to smell like morning. After all, Archie,
think of the lonely and rather solemn hours we've spent
waiting for all this, while she's been--reveling."

Archie lifted his brows. "I somehow didn't get the idea
to-night that she revels much."

"I don't mean this sort of thing." Fred turned toward
the light and stood with his back to the window. "That,"
with a nod toward the wine-cooler, "is only a cheap imita-
tion, that any poor stiff-fingered fool can buy and feel his
shell grow thinner. But take it from me, no matter what
she pays, or how much she may see fit to lie about it, the
real, the master revel is hers." He leaned back against the
window sill and crossed his arms. "Anybody with all that
voice and all that talent and all that beauty, has her hour.
Her hour," he went on deliberately, "when she can say,
'there it is, at last, WIE IM TRAUM ICH--

"`As in my dream I dreamed it,

As in my will it was.'"

He stood silent a moment, twisting the flower from his
coat by the stem and staring at the blank wall with hag-

gard abstraction. "Even I can say to-night, Archie," he
brought out slowly,

"`As in my dream I dreamed it,
As in my will it was.'

Now, doctor, you may leave me. I'm beautifully drunk,
but not with anything that ever grew in France."

The doctor rose. Fred tossed his flower out of the win-
dow behind him and came toward the door. "I say," he
called, "have you a date with anybody?"

The doctor paused, his hand on the knob. "With Thea,
you mean? Yes. I'm to go to her at four this afternoon--
if you haven't paralyzed me."

"Well, you won't eat me, will you, if I break in and send
up my card? She'll probably turn me down cold, but that
won't hurt my feelings. If she ducks me, you tell her for me,
that to spite me now she'd have to cut off more than she
can spare. Good-night, Archie."

IT was late on the morning after the night she sang ELSA,
when Thea Kronborg stirred uneasily in her bed. The
room was darkened by two sets of window shades, and the
day outside was thick and cloudy. She turned and tried
to recapture unconsciousness, knowing that she would not
be able to do so. She dreaded waking stale and disap-
pointed after a great effort. The first thing that came was
always the sense of the futility of such endeavor, and of
the absurdity of trying too hard. Up to a certain point,
say eighty degrees, artistic endeavor could be fat and
comfortable, methodical and prudent. But if you went
further than that, if you drew yourself up toward ninety
degrees, you parted with your defenses and left yourself
exposed to mischance. The legend was that in those upper
reaches you might be divine; but you were much likelier
to be ridiculous. Your public wanted just about eighty
degrees; if you gave it more it blew its nose and put a
crimp in you. In the morning, especially, it seemed to
her very probable that whatever struggled above the good
average was not quite sound. Certainly very little of that
superfluous ardor, which cost so dear, ever got across the
footlights. These misgivings waited to pounce upon her
when she wakened. They hovered about her bed like
vultures.

She reached under her pillow for her handkerchief, with-
out opening her eyes. She had a shadowy memory that
there was to be something unusual, that this day held more
disquieting possibilities than days commonly held. There
was something she dreaded; what was it? Oh, yes, Dr.
Archie was to come at four.

A reality like Dr. Archie, poking up out of the past, re-

minded one of disappointments and losses, of a freedom
that was no more: reminded her of blue, golden mornings
long ago, when she used to waken with a burst of joy at
recovering her precious self and her precious world; when
she never lay on her pillows at eleven o'clock like some-
thing the waves had washed up. After all, why had he
come? It had been so long, and so much had happened.
The things she had lost, he would miss readily enough.
What she had gained, he would scarcely perceive. He, and
all that he recalled, lived for her as memories. In sleep,
and in hours of illness or exhaustion, she went back to
them and held them to her heart. But they were better
as memories. They had nothing to do with the struggle
that made up her actual life. She felt drearily that she
was not flexible enough to be the person her old friend
expected her to be, the person she herself wished to be
with him.

Thea reached for the bell and rang twice,--a signal to
her maid to order her breakfast. She rose and ran up the
window shades and turned on the water in her bathroom,
glancing into the mirror apprehensively as she passed it.
Her bath usually cheered her, even on low mornings like
this. Her white bathroom, almost as large as her sleeping-
room, she regarded as a refuge. When she turned the key
behind her, she left care and vexation on the other side of
the door. Neither her maid nor the management nor her
letters nor her accompanist could get at her now.

When she pinned her braids about her head, dropped
her nightgown and stepped out to begin her Swedish move-
ments, she was a natural creature again, and it was so that
she liked herself best. She slid into the tub with anticipa-
tion and splashed and tumbled about a good deal. What-
ever else she hurried, she never hurried her bath. She
used her brushes and sponges and soaps like toys, fairly
playing in the water. Her own body was always a cheer-
ing sight to her. When she was careworn, when her mind

felt old and tired, the freshness of her physical self, her
long, firm lines, the smoothness of her skin, reassured her.
This morning, because of awakened memories, she looked
at herself more carefully than usual, and was not discour-
aged. While she was in the tub she began to whistle
softly the tenor aria, "AH! FUYEZ, DOUCE IMAGE," somehow
appropriate to the bath. After a noisy moment under the
cold shower, she stepped out on the rug flushed and glow-
ing, threw her arms above her head, and rose on her toes,
keeping the elevation as long as she could. When she
dropped back on her heels and began to rub herself with
the towels, she took up the aria again, and felt quite in the
humor for seeing Dr. Archie. After she had returned to her
bed, the maid brought her letters and the morning papers
with her breakfast.

"Telephone Mr. Landry and ask him if he can come at
half-past three, Theresa, and order tea to be brought up
at five."

When Howard Archie was admitted to Thea's apart-
ment that afternoon, he was shown into the music-room
back of the little reception room. Thea was sitting in a
davenport behind the piano, talking to a young man whom
she later introduced as her friend Mr. Landry. As she
rose, and came to meet him, Archie felt a deep relief, a
sudden thankfulness. She no longer looked clipped and
plucked, or dazed and fleeing.

Dr. Archie neglected to take account of the young man
to whom he was presented. He kept Thea's hands and
held her where he met her, taking in the light, lively sweep
of her hair, her clear green eyes and her throat that came
up strong and dazzlingly white from her green velvet gown.
The chin was as lovely as ever, the cheeks as smooth.
All the lines of last night had disappeared. Only at the
outer corners of her eyes, between the eye and the temple,
were the faintest indications of a future attack--mere

kitten scratches that playfully hinted where one day the
cat would claw her. He studied her without any embar-
rassment. Last night everything had been awkward; but
now, as he held her hands, a kind of harmony came between
them, a reestablishment of confidence.

"After all, Thea,--in spite of all, I still know you," he
murmured.

She took his arm and led him up to the young man who
was standing beside the piano. "Mr. Landry knows all
about you, Dr. Archie. He has known about you for many
years." While the two men shook hands she stood between
them, drawing them together by her presence and her
glances. "When I first went to Germany, Landry was
studying there. He used to be good enough to work with
me when I could not afford to have an accompanist for
more than two hours a day. We got into the way of work-
ing together. He is a singer, too, and has his own career to
look after, but he still manages to give me some time. I
want you to be friends." She smiled from one to the
other.

The rooms, Archie noticed, full of last night's flowers,
were furnished in light colors, the hotel bleakness of them
a little softened by a magnificent Steinway piano, white
bookshelves full of books and scores, some drawings of
ballet dancers, and the very deep sofa behind the piano.

"Of course," Archie asked apologetically, "you have
seen the papers?"

"Very cordial, aren't they? They evidently did not
expect as much as I did. ELSA is not really in my voice.
I can sing the music, but I have to go after it."

"That is exactly," the doctor came out boldly, "what
Fred Ottenburg said this morning."

They had remained standing, the three of them, by the
piano, where the gray afternoon light was strongest. Thea
turned to the doctor with interest. "Is Fred in town?
They were from him, then--some flowers that came last

night without a card." She indicated the white lilacs on
the window sill. "Yes, he would know, certainly," she said
thoughtfully. "Why don't we sit down? There will be
some tea for you in a minute, Landry. He's very depend-
ent upon it," disapprovingly to Archie. "Now tell me,
Doctor, did you really have a good time last night, or were
you uncomfortable? Did you feel as if I were trying to
hold my hat on by my eyebrows?"

He smiled. "I had all kinds of a time. But I had no feel-
ing of that sort. I couldn't be quite sure that it was you at
all. That was why I came up here last night. I felt as if
I'd lost you."

She leaned toward him and brushed his sleeve reassur-
ingly. "Then I didn't give you an impression of painful
struggle? Landry was singing at Weber and Fields' last
night. He didn't get in until the performance was half
over. But I see the TRIBUNE man felt that I was working
pretty hard. Did you see that notice, Oliver?"

Dr. Archie looked closely at the red-headed young man
for the first time, and met his lively brown eyes, full of a
droll, confiding sort of humor. Mr. Landry was not pre-
possessing. He was undersized and clumsily made, with a
red, shiny face and a sharp little nose that looked as if it
had been whittled out of wood and was always in the air,
on the scent of something. Yet it was this queer little
beak, with his eyes, that made his countenance anything
of a face at all. From a distance he looked like the grocery-
man's delivery boy in a small town. His dress seemed an
acknowledgment of his grotesqueness: a short coat, like a
little boys' roundabout, and a vest fantastically sprigged
and dotted, over a lavender shirt.

At the sound of a muffled buzz, Mr. Landry sprang up.

"May I answer the telephone for you?" He went to the
writing-table and took up the receiver. "Mr. Ottenburg is
downstairs," he said, turning to Thea and holding the
mouthpiece against his coat.

"Tell him to come up," she replied without hesitation.
"How long are you going to be in town, Dr. Archie?"

"Oh, several weeks, if you'll let me stay. I won't hang
around and be a burden to you, but I want to try to get
educated up to you, though I expect it's late to begin."

Thea rose and touched him lightly on the shoulder.
"Well, you'll never be any younger, will you?"

"I'm not so sure about that," the doctor replied gal-
lantly.

The maid appeared at the door and announced Mr. Fred-
erick Ottenburg. Fred came in, very much got up, the
doctor reflected, as he watched him bending over Thea's
hand. He was still pale and looked somewhat chastened,
and the lock of hair that hung down over his forehead was
distinctly moist. But his black afternoon coat, his gray tie
and gaiters were of a correctness that Dr. Archie could
never attain for all the efforts of his faithful slave, Van
Deusen, the Denver haberdasher. To be properly up to
those tricks, the doctor supposed, you had to learn them
young. If he were to buy a silk hat that was the twin of
Ottenburg's, it would be shaggy in a week, and he could
never carry it as Fred held his.

Ottenburg had greeted Thea in German, and as she
replied in the same language, Archie joined Mr. Landry at
the window. "You know Mr. Ottenburg, he tells me?"

Mr. Landry's eyes twinkled. "Yes, I regularly follow
him about, when he's in town. I would, even if he didn't
send me such wonderful Christmas presents: Russian vodka
by the half-dozen!"

Thea called to them, "Come, Mr. Ottenburg is calling on
all of us. Here's the tea."

The maid opened the door and two waiters from down-
stairs appeared with covered trays. The tea-table was in
the parlor. Thea drew Ottenburg with her and went to
inspect it. "Where's the rum? Oh, yes, in that thing!
Everything seems to be here, but send up some currant

preserves and cream cheese for Mr. Ottenburg. And in
about fifteen minutes, bring some fresh toast. That's all,
thank you."

For the next few minutes there was a clatter of teacups
and responses about sugar. "Landry always takes rum.
I'm glad the rest of you don't. I'm sure it's bad." Thea
poured the tea standing and got through with it as quickly
as possible, as if it were a refreshment snatched between
trains. The tea-table and the little room in which it stood
seemed to be out of scale with her long step, her long reach,
and the energy of her movements. Dr. Archie, standing
near her, was pleasantly aware of the animation of her
figure. Under the clinging velvet, her body seemed in-
dependent and unsubdued.

They drifted, with their plates and cups, back to the
music-room. When Thea followed them, Ottenburg put
down his tea suddenly. "Aren't you taking anything?
Please let me." He started back to the table.

"No, thank you, nothing. I'm going to run over that
aria for you presently, to convince you that I can do it.
How did the duet go, with Schlag?"

She was standing in the doorway and Fred came up to
her: "That you'll never do any better. You've worked
your voice into it perfectly. Every NUANCE--wonder-
ful!"

"Think so?" She gave him a sidelong glance and spoke
with a certain gruff shyness which did not deceive anybody,
and was not meant to deceive. The tone was equivalent to
"Keep it up. I like it, but I'm awkward with it."

Fred held her by the door and did keep it up, furiously,
for full five minutes. She took it with some confusion, seem-
ing all the while to be hesitating, to be arrested in her
course and trying to pass him. But she did not really try
to pass, and her color deepened. Fred spoke in German,
and Archie caught from her an occasional JA? SO? mut-
tered rather than spoken.

When they rejoined Landry and Dr. Archie, Fred took
up his tea again. "I see you're singing VENUS Saturday
night. Will they never let you have a chance at ELIZABETH?"

She shrugged her shoulders. "Not here. There are so
many singers here, and they try us out in such a stingy way.
Think of it, last year I came over in October, and it was the
first of December before I went on at all! I'm often sorry
I left Dresden."

"Still," Fred argued, "Dresden is limited."

"Just so, and I've begun to sigh for those very limita-
tions. In New York everything is impersonal. Your audi-
ence never knows its own mind, and its mind is never twice
the same. I'd rather sing where the people are pig-headed
and throw carrots at you if you don't do it the way they
like it. The house here is splendid, and the night audi-
ences are exciting. I hate the matinees; like singing at a
KAFFEKLATSCH." She rose and turned on the lights.

"Ah!" Fred exclaimed, "why do you do that? That is
a signal that tea is over." He got up and drew out his
gloves.

"Not at all. Shall you be here Saturday night?" She
sat down on the piano bench and leaned her elbow back on
the keyboard. "Necker sings ELIZABETH. Make Dr. Archie
go. Everything she sings is worth hearing."

"But she's failing so. The last time I heard her she had
no voice at all. She IS a poor vocalist!"

Thea cut him off. "She's a great artist, whether she's in
voice or not, and she's the only one here. If you want a big
voice, you can take my ORTRUDE of last night; that's big
enough, and vulgar enough."

Fred laughed and turned away, this time with decision.
"I don't want her!" he protested energetically. "I only
wanted to get a rise out of you. I like Necker's ELIZABETH
well enough. I like your VENUS well enough, too."

"It's a beautiful part, and it's often dreadfully sung.
It's very hard to sing, of course."

Ottenburg bent over the hand she held out to him. "For
an uninvited guest, I've fared very well. You were nice
to let me come up. I'd have been terribly cut up if you'd
sent me away. May I?" He kissed her hand lightly and
backed toward the door, still smiling, and promising to
keep an eye on Archie. "He can't be trusted at all, Thea.
One of the waiters at Martin's worked a Tourainian hare
off on him at luncheon yesterday, for seven twenty-five."

Thea broke into a laugh, the deep one he recognized.
"Did he have a ribbon on, this hare? Did they bring him
in a gilt cage?"

"No,"--Archie spoke up for himself,--"they brought
him in a brown sauce, which was very good. He didn't
taste very different from any rabbit."

"Probably came from a push-cart on the East Side."
Thea looked at her old friend commiseratingly. "Yes, DO
keep an eye on him, Fred. I had no idea," shaking her
head. "Yes, I'll be obliged to you."

"Count on me!" Their eyes met in a gay smile, and
Fred bowed himself out.

VII

ON Saturday night Dr. Archie went with Fred Otten-
burg to hear "Tannhauser." Thea had a rehearsal
on Sunday afternoon, but as she was not on the bill again
until Wednesday, she promised to dine with Archie and
Ottenburg on Monday, if they could make the dinner
early.

At a little after eight on Monday evening, the three
friends returned to Thea's apartment and seated them-
selves for an hour of quiet talk.

"I'm sorry we couldn't have had Landry with us to-
night," Thea said, "but he's on at Weber and Fields' every
night now. You ought to hear him, Dr. Archie. He often
sings the old Scotch airs you used to love."

"Why not go down this evening?" Fred suggested hope-
fully, glancing at his watch. "That is, if you'd like to go.
I can telephone and find what time he comes on."

Thea hesitated. "No, I think not. I took a long walk
this afternoon and I'm rather tired. I think I can get to
sleep early and be so much ahead. I don't mean at once,
however," seeing Dr. Archie's disappointed look. "I al-
ways like to hear Landry," she added. "He never had
much voice, and it's worn, but there's a sweetness about
it, and he sings with such taste."

"Yes, doesn't he? May I?" Fred took out his cigarette
case. "It really doesn't bother your throat?"

"A little doesn't. But cigar smoke does. Poor Dr.
Archie! Can you do with one of those?"

"I'm learning to like them," the doctor declared, taking
one from the case Fred proffered him.

"Landry's the only fellow I know in this country who
can do that sort of thing," Fred went on. "Like the best

English ballad singers. He can sing even popular stuff by
higher lights, as it were."

Thea nodded. "Yes; sometimes I make him sing his
most foolish things for me. It's restful, as he does it.
That's when I'm homesick, Dr. Archie."

"You knew him in Germany, Thea?" Dr. Archie had
quietly abandoned his cigarette as a comfortless article.
"When you first went over?"

"Yes. He was a good friend to a green girl. He helped me
with my German and my music and my general discourage-
ment. Seemed to care more about my getting on than about
himself. He had no money, either. An old aunt had loaned
him a little to study on.-- Will you answer that, Fred?"

Fred caught up the telephone and stopped the buzz
while Thea went on talking to Dr. Archie about Landry.
Telling some one to hold the wire, he presently put down
the instrument and approached Thea with a startled ex-
pression on his face.

"It's the management," he said quietly. "Gloeckler has
broken down: fainting fits. Madame Rheinecker is in At-
lantic City and Schramm is singing in Philadelphia to-
night. They want to know whether you can come down and
finish SIEGLINDE."

"What time is it?"

"Eight fifty-five. The first act is just over. They can
hold the curtain twenty-five minutes."

Thea did not move. "Twenty-five and thirty-five makes
sixty," she muttered. "Tell them I'll come if they hold the
curtain till I am in the dressing-room. Say I'll have to wear
her costumes, and the dresser must have everything ready.
Then call a taxi, please."

Thea had not changed her position since he first inter-
rupted her, but she had grown pale and was opening and
shutting her hands rapidly. She looked, Fred thought, ter-
rified. He half turned toward the telephone, but hung on
one foot.

"Have you ever sung the part?" he asked.

"No, but I've rehearsed it. That's all right. Get the
cab." Still she made no move. She merely turned per-
fectly blank eyes to Dr. Archie and said absently, "It's
curious, but just at this minute I can't remember a bar of
'Walkure' after the first act. And I let my maid go out."
She sprang up and beckoned Archie without so much, he
felt sure, as knowing who he was. "Come with me." She
went quickly into her sleeping-chamber and threw open a
door into a trunk-room. "See that white trunk? It's not
locked. It's full of wigs, in boxes. Look until you find one
marked `Ring 2.' Bring it quick!" While she directed
him, she threw open a square trunk and began tossing out
shoes of every shape and color.

Ottenburg appeared at the door. "Can I help you?"

She threw him some white sandals with long laces and
silk stockings pinned to them. "Put those in something,
and then go to the piano and give me a few measures in
there--you know." She was behaving somewhat like a
cyclone now, and while she wrenched open drawers and
closet doors, Ottenburg got to the piano as quickly as pos-
sible and began to herald the reappearance of the Volsung
pair, trusting to memory.

In a few moments Thea came out enveloped in her long
fur coat with a scarf over her head and knitted woolen
gloves on her hands. Her glassy eye took in the fact that
Fred was playing from memory, and even in her distracted
state, a faint smile flickered over her colorless lips. She
stretched out a woolly hand, "The score, please. Behind
you, there."

Dr. Archie followed with a canvas box and a satchel. As
they went through the hall, the men caught up their hats
and coats. They left the music-room, Fred noticed, just
seven minutes after he got the telephone message. In the
elevator Thea said in that husky whisper which had so per-
plexed Dr. Archie when he first heard it, "Tell the driver

he must do it in twenty minutes, less if he can. He must
leave the light on in the cab. I can do a good deal in twenty
minutes. If only you hadn't made me eat-- Damn
that duck!" she broke out bitterly; "why did you?"

"Wish I had it back! But it won't bother you, to-night.
You need strength," he pleaded consolingly.

But she only muttered angrily under her breath, "Idiot,
idiot!"

Ottenburg shot ahead and instructed the driver, while
the doctor put Thea into the cab and shut the door. She
did not speak to either of them again. As the driver scram-
bled into his seat she opened the score and fixed her eyes
upon it. Her face, in the white light, looked as bleak as a
stone quarry.

As her cab slid away, Ottenburg shoved Archie into a
second taxi that waited by the curb. "We'd better trail
her," he explained. "There might be a hold-up of some
kind." As the cab whizzed off he broke into an eruption of
profanity.

"What's the matter, Fred?" the doctor asked. He
was a good deal dazed by the rapid evolutions of the last
ten minutes.

"Matter enough!" Fred growled, buttoning his over-
coat with a shiver. "What a way to sing a part for the first
time! That duck really is on my conscience. It will be a
wonder if she can do anything but quack! Scrambling on
in the middle of a performance like this, with no rehearsal!
The stuff she has to sing in there is a fright--rhythm,
pitch,--and terribly difficult intervals."

"She looked frightened," Dr. Archie said thoughtfully,
"but I thought she looked--determined."

Fred sniffed. "Oh, determined! That's the kind of
rough deal that makes savages of singers. Here's a part
she's worked on and got ready for for years, and now they
give her a chance to go on and butcher it. Goodness knows
when she's looked at the score last, or whether she can use

the business she's studied with this cast. Necker's singing
BRUNNHILDE; she may help her, if it's not one of her sore
nights."

"Is she sore at Thea?" Dr. Archie asked wonderingly.

"My dear man, Necker's sore at everything. She's
breaking up; too early; just when she ought to be at her
best. There's one story that she is struggling under some
serious malady, another that she learned a bad method at
the Prague Conservatory and has ruined her organ. She's
the sorest thing in the world. If she weathers this winter
through, it'll be her last. She's paying for it with the last
rags of her voice. And then--" Fred whistled softly.

"Well, what then?"

"Then our girl may come in for some of it. It's dog eat
dog, in this game as in every other."

The cab stopped and Fred and Dr. Archie hurried to the
box office. The Monday-night house was sold out. They
bought standing room and entered the auditorium just as
the press representative of the house was thanking the
audience for their patience and telling them that although
Madame Gloeckler was too ill to sing, Miss Kronborg had
kindly consented to finish her part. This announcement
was met with vehement applause from the upper circles of
the house.

"She has her--constituents," Dr. Archie murmured.

"Yes, up there, where they're young and hungry. These
people down here have dined too well. They won't mind,
however. They like fires and accidents and DIVERTISSEMENTS.
Two SIEGLINDES are more unusual than one, so they'll be
satisfied."

After the final disappearance of the mother of Siegfried,
Ottenburg and the doctor slipped out through the crowd
and left the house. Near the stage entrance Fred found
the driver who had brought Thea down. He dismissed him
and got a larger car. He and Archie waited on the sidewalk,

and when Kronborg came out alone they gathered her into
the cab and sprang in after her.

Thea sank back into a corner of the back seat and
yawned. "Well, I got through, eh?" Her tone was reas-
suring. "On the whole, I think I've given you gentlemen a
pretty lively evening, for one who has no social accomplish-
ments."

"Rather! There was something like a popular uprising
at the end of the second act. Archie and I couldn't keep
it up as long as the rest of them did. A howl like that
ought to show the management which way the wind is
blowing. You probably know you were magnificent."

"I thought it went pretty well," she spoke impartially.
"I was rather smart to catch his tempo there, at the begin-
ning of the first recitative, when he came in too soon, don't
you think? It's tricky in there, without a rehearsal. Oh,
I was all right! He took that syncopation too fast in the
beginning. Some singers take it fast there--think it
sounds more impassioned. That's one way!" She sniffed,
and Fred shot a mirthful glance at Archie. Her boastful-
ness would have been childish in a schoolboy. In the light
of what she had done, of the strain they had lived through
during the last two hours, it made one laugh,--almost
cry. She went on, robustly: "And I didn't feel my din-
ner, really, Fred. I am hungry again, I'm ashamed to say,
--and I forgot to order anything at my hotel."

Fred put his hand on the door. "Where to? You must
have food."

"Do you know any quiet place, where I won't be stared
at? I've still got make-up on."

"I do. Nice English chop-house on Forty-fourth Street.
Nobody there at night but theater people after the show,
and a few bachelors." He opened the door and spoke to the
driver.

As the car turned, Thea reached across to the front seat
and drew Dr. Archie's handkerchief out of his breast pocket.

"This comes to me naturally," she said, rubbing her cheeks
and eyebrows. "When I was little I always loved your
handkerchiefs because they were silk and smelled of Col-
ogne water. I think they must have been the only really
clean handkerchiefs in Moonstone. You were always
wiping my face with them, when you met me out in the
dust, I remember. Did I never have any?"

"I think you'd nearly always used yours up on your
baby brother."

Thea sighed. "Yes, Thor had such a way of getting
messy. You say he's a good chauffeur?" She closed her
eyes for a moment as if they were tired. Suddenly she
looked up. "Isn't it funny, how we travel in circles? Here
you are, still getting me clean, and Fred is still feeding me.
I would have died of starvation at that boarding-house on
Indiana Avenue if he hadn't taken me out to the Bucking-
ham and filled me up once in a while. What a cavern I was
to fill, too. The waiters used to look astonished. I'm still
singing on that food."

Fred alighted and gave Thea his arm as they crossed the
icy sidewalk. They were taken upstairs in an antiquated
lift and found the cheerful chop-room half full of supper
parties. An English company playing at the Empire had
just come in. The waiters, in red waistcoats, were hurry-
ing about. Fred got a table at the back of the room,
in a corner, and urged his waiter to get the oysters on at
once.

"Takes a few minutes to open them, sir," the man ex-
postulated.

"Yes, but make it as few as possible, and bring the
lady's first. Then grilled chops with kidneys, and salad."

Thea began eating celery stalks at once, from the base
to the foliage. "Necker said something nice to me to-
night. You might have thought the management would
say something, but not they." She looked at Fred from
under her blackened lashes. "It WAS a stunt, to jump in

and sing that second act without rehearsal. It doesn't
sing itself."

Ottenburg was watching her brilliant eyes and her face.
She was much handsomer than she had been early in the
evening. Excitement of this sort enriched her. It was only
under such excitement, he reflected, that she was entirely
illuminated, or wholly present. At other times there was
something a little cold and empty, like a big room with no
people in it. Even in her most genial moods there was a
shadow of restlessness, as if she were waiting for something
and were exercising the virtue of patience. During dinner
she had been as kind as she knew how to be, to him and to
Archie, and had given them as much of herself as she could.
But, clearly, she knew only one way of being really kind,
from the core of her heart out; and there was but one way in
which she could give herself to people largely and gladly,
spontaneously. Even as a girl she had been at her best in
vigorous effort, he remembered; physical effort, when there
was no other kind at hand. She could be expansive only in
explosions. Old Nathanmeyer had seen it. In the very first
song Fred had ever heard her sing, she had unconsciously
declared it.

Thea Kronborg turned suddenly from her talk with
Archie and peered suspiciously into the corner where Otten-
burg sat with folded arms, observing her. "What's the
matter with you, Fred? I'm afraid of you when you're
quiet,--fortunately you almost never are. What are you
thinking about?"

"I was wondering how you got right with the orchestra
so quickly, there at first. I had a flash of terror," he re-
plied easily.

She bolted her last oyster and ducked her head. "So
had I! I don't know how I did catch it. Desperation, I
suppose; same way the Indian babies swim when they're
thrown into the river. I HAD to. Now it's over, I'm glad I
had to. I learned a whole lot to-night."

Archie, who usually felt that it behooved him to be silent
during such discussions, was encouraged by her geniality
to venture, "I don't see how you can learn anything in such
a turmoil; or how you can keep your mind on it, for that
matter."

Thea glanced about the room and suddenly put her hand
up to her hair. "Mercy, I've no hat on! Why didn't you
tell me? And I seem to be wearing a rumpled dinner dress,
with all this paint on my face! I must look like something
you picked up on Second Avenue. I hope there are no
Colorado reformers about, Dr. Archie. What a dreadful
old pair these people must be thinking you! Well, I had to
eat." She sniffed the savor of the grill as the waiter uncov-
ered it. "Yes, draught beer, please. No, thank you, Fred,
NO champagne.-- To go back to your question, Dr. Archie,
you can believe I keep my mind on it. That's the whole
trick, in so far as stage experience goes; keeping right there
every second. If I think of anything else for a flash, I'm
gone, done for. But at the same time, one can take things
in--with another part of your brain, maybe. It's different
from what you get in study, more practical and conclusive.
There are some things you learn best in calm, and some in
storm. You learn the delivery of a part only before an
audience."

"Heaven help us," gasped Ottenburg. "Weren't you
hungry, though! It's beautiful to see you eat."

"Glad you like it. Of course I'm hungry. Are you stay-
ing over for `Rheingold' Friday afternoon?"

"My dear Thea,"--Fred lit a cigarette,--"I'm a seri-
ous business man now. I have to sell beer. I'm due in
Chicago on Wednesday. I'd come back to hear you, but
FRICKA is not an alluring part."

"Then you've never heard it well done." She spoke up
hotly. "Fat German woman scolding her husband, eh?
That's not my idea. Wait till you hear my FRICKA. It's a
beautiful part." Thea leaned forward on the table and

touched Archie's arm. "You remember, Dr. Archie, how
my mother always wore her hair, parted in the middle
and done low on her neck behind, so you got the shape of
her head and such a calm, white forehead? I wear mine like
that for FRICKA. A little more coronet effect, built up a lit-
tle higher at the sides, but the idea's the same. I think
you'll notice it." She turned to Ottenburg reproachfully:
"It's noble music, Fred, from the first measure. There's
nothing lovelier than the WONNIGER HAUSRATH. It's all such
comprehensive sort of music--fateful. Of course, FRICKA
KNOWS," Thea ended quietly.

Fred sighed. "There, you've spoiled my itinerary.
Now I'll have to come back, of course. Archie, you'd bet-
ter get busy about seats to-morrow."

"I can get you box seats, somewhere. I know nobody
here, and I never ask for any." Thea began hunting among
her wraps. "Oh, how funny! I've only these short woolen
gloves, and no sleeves. Put on my coat first. Those Eng-
lish people can't make out where you got your lady, she's
so made up of contradictions." She rose laughing and
plunged her arms into the coat Dr. Archie held for her. As
she settled herself into it and buttoned it under her chin,
she gave him an old signal with her eyelid. "I'd like to
sing another part to-night. This is the sort of evening I
fancy, when there's something to do. Let me see: I have to
sing in `Trovatore' Wednesday night, and there are re-
hearsals for the `Ring' every day this week. Consider me
dead until Saturday, Dr. Archie. I invite you both to dine
with me on Saturday night, the day after `Rheingold.'
And Fred must leave early, for I want to talk to you alone.
You've been here nearly a week, and I haven't had a seri-
ous word with you. TAK FOR MAD, Fred, as the Norwegians
say."

VIII

THE "Ring of the Niebelungs" was to be given at the
Metropolitan on four successive Friday afternoons.
After the first of these performances, Fred Ottenburg went
home with Landry for tea. Landry was one of the few pub-
lic entertainers who own real estate in New York. He lived
in a little three-story brick house on Jane Street, in Green-
wich Village, which had been left to him by the same aunt
who paid for his musical education.

Landry was born, and spent the first fifteen years of
his life, on a rocky Connecticut farm not far from Cos Cob.
His father was an ignorant, violent man, a bungling farmer
and a brutal husband. The farmhouse, dilapidated and
damp, stood in a hollow beside a marshy pond. Oliver had
worked hard while he lived at home, although he was never
clean or warm in winter and had wretched food all the year
round. His spare, dry figure, his prominent larynx, and the
peculiar red of his face and hands belonged to the chore-
boy he had never outgrown. It was as if the farm, knowing
he would escape from it as early as he could, had ground its
mark on him deep. When he was fifteen Oliver ran away
and went to live with his Catholic aunt, on Jane Street,
whom his mother was never allowed to visit. The priest of
St. Joseph's Parish discovered that he had a voice.

Landry had an affection for the house on Jane Street,
where he had first learned what cleanliness and order and
courtesy were. When his aunt died he had the place done
over, got an Irish housekeeper, and lived there with a great
many beautiful things he had collected. His living ex-
penses were never large, but he could not restrain himself
from buying graceful and useless objects. He was a collec-
tor for much the same reason that he was a Catholic, and

he was a Catholic chiefly because his father used to sit
in the kitchen and read aloud to his hired men disgusting
"exposures" of the Roman Church, enjoying equally the
hideous stories and the outrage to his wife's feelings.

At first Landry bought books; then rugs, drawings,
china. He had a beautiful collection of old French and
Spanish fans. He kept them in an escritoire he had brought
from Spain, but there were always a few of them lying
about in his sitting-room.

While Landry and his guest were waiting for the tea to
be brought, Ottenburg took up one of these fans from the
low marble mantel-shelf and opened it in the firelight. One
side was painted with a pearly sky and floating clouds.
On the other was a formal garden where an elegant shep-
herdess with a mask and crook was fleeing on high heels
from a satin-coated shepherd.

"You ought not to keep these things about, like this,
Oliver. The dust from your grate must get at them."

"It does, but I get them to enjoy them, not to have
them. They're pleasant to glance at and to play with at
odd times like this, when one is waiting for tea or some-
thing."

Fred smiled. The idea of Landry stretched out before his
fire playing with his fans, amused him. Mrs. McGinnis
brought the tea and put it before the hearth: old teacups
that were velvety to the touch and a pot-bellied silver
cream pitcher of an Early Georgian pattern, which was
always brought, though Landry took rum.

Fred drank his tea walking about, examining Landry's
sumptuous writing-table in the alcove and the Boucher
drawing in red chalk over the mantel. "I don't see how
you can stand this place without a heroine. It would give
me a raging thirst for gallantries."

Landry was helping himself to a second cup of tea.
"Works quite the other way with me. It consoles me for
the lack of her. It's just feminine enough to be pleasant to

return to. Not any more tea? Then sit down and play for
me. I'm always playing for other people, and I never have
a chance to sit here quietly and listen."

Ottenburg opened the piano and began softly to boom
forth the shadowy introduction to the opera they had just
heard. "Will that do?" he asked jokingly. "I can't seem
to get it out of my head."

"Oh, excellently! Thea told me it was quite wonderful,
the way you can do Wagner scores on the piano. So few
people can give one any idea of the music. Go ahead, as
long as you like. I can smoke, too." Landry flattened him-
self out on his cushions and abandoned himself to ease with
the circumstance of one who has never grown quite accus-
tomed to ease.

Ottenburg played on, as he happened to remember. He
understood now why Thea wished him to hear her in
"Rheingold." It had been clear to him as soon as FRICKA
rose from sleep and looked out over the young world,
stretching one white arm toward the new Gotterburg
shining on the heights. "WOTAN! GEMAHL! ERWACHE!" She
was pure Scandinavian, this FRICKA: "Swedish summer"!
he remembered old Mr. Nathanmeyer's phrase. She had
wished him to see her because she had a distinct kind of
loveliness for this part, a shining beauty like the light of
sunset on distant sails. She seemed to take on the look
of immortal loveliness, the youth of the golden apples, the
shining body and the shining mind. FRICKA had been a
jealous spouse to him for so long that he had forgot she
meant wisdom before she meant domestic order, and that,
in any event, she was always a goddess. The FRICKA of
that afternoon was so clear and sunny, so nobly conceived,
that she made a whole atmosphere about herself and quite
redeemed from shabbiness the helplessness and unscrupu-
lousness of the gods. Her reproaches to WOTAN were the
pleadings of a tempered mind, a consistent sense of beauty.
In the long silences of her part, her shining presence was a

visible complement to the discussion of the orchestra. As
the themes which were to help in weaving the drama to its
end first came vaguely upon the ear, one saw their import
and tendency in the face of this clearest-visioned of the
gods.

In the scene between FRICKA and WOTAN, Ottenburg
stopped. "I can't seem to get the voices, in there."

Landry chuckled. "Don't try. I know it well enough.
I expect I've been over that with her a thousand times. I
was playing for her almost every day when she was first
working on it. When she begins with a part she's hard to
work with: so slow you'd think she was stupid if you didn't
know her. Of course she blames it all on her accompanist.
It goes on like that for weeks sometimes. This did. She
kept shaking her head and staring and looking gloomy.
All at once, she got her line--it usually comes suddenly,
after stretches of not getting anywhere at all--and after
that it kept changing and clearing. As she worked her voice
into it, it got more and more of that `gold' quality that
makes her FRICKA so different."

Fred began FRICKA'S first aria again. "It's certainly
different. Curious how she does it. Such a beautiful idea,
out of a part that's always been so ungrateful. She's a
lovely thing, but she was never so beautiful as that, really.
Nobody is." He repeated the loveliest phrase. "How does
she manage it, Landry? You've worked with her."

Landry drew cherishingly on the last cigarette he meant
to permit himself before singing. "Oh, it's a question of a
big personality--and all that goes with it. Brains, of
course. Imagination, of course. But the important thing
is that she was born full of color, with a rich personality.
That's a gift of the gods, like a fine nose. You have it, or
you haven't. Against it, intelligence and musicianship
and habits of industry don't count at all. Singers are a
conventional race. When Thea was studying in Berlin the
other girls were mortally afraid of her. She has a pretty

rough hand with women, dull ones, and she could be rude,
too! The girls used to call her DIE WOLFIN."

Fred thrust his hands into his pockets and leaned back
against the piano. "Of course, even a stupid woman
could get effects with such machinery: such a voice and
body and face. But they couldn't possibly belong to a
stupid woman, could they?"

Landry shook his head. "It's personality; that's as near
as you can come to it. That's what constitutes real equip-
ment. What she does is interesting because she does it.
Even the things she discards are suggestive. I regret some
of them. Her conceptions are colored in so many different
ways. You've heard her ELIZABETH? Wonderful, isn't it?
She was working on that part years ago when her mother
was ill. I could see her anxiety and grief getting more
and more into the part. The last act is heart-breaking.
It's as homely as a country prayer meeting: might be
any lonely woman getting ready to die. It's full of the
thing every plain creature finds out for himself, but that
never gets written down. It's unconscious memory, maybe;
inherited memory, like folk-music. I call it personality."

Fred laughed, and turning to the piano began coaxing
the FRICKA music again. "Call it anything you like, my
boy. I have a name for it myself, but I shan't tell you."
He looked over his shoulder at Landry, stretched out by
the fire. "You have a great time watching her, don't
you?"

"Oh, yes!" replied Landry simply. "I'm not interested
in much that goes on in New York. Now, if you'll excuse
me, I'll have to dress." He rose with a reluctant sigh.
"Can I get you anything? Some whiskey?"

"Thank you, no. I'll amuse myself here. I don't often
get a chance at a good piano when I'm away from home.
You haven't had this one long, have you? Action's a bit
stiff. I say," he stopped Landry in the doorway, "has
Thea ever been down here?"

Landry turned back. "Yes. She came several times
when I had erysipelas. I was a nice mess, with two
nurses. She brought down some inside window-boxes,
planted with crocuses and things. Very cheering, only I
couldn't see them or her."

"Didn't she like your place?"

"She thought she did, but I fancy it was a good deal
cluttered up for her taste. I could hear her pacing about
like something in a cage. She pushed the piano back
against the wall and the chairs into corners, and she broke
my amber elephant." Landry took a yellow object some
four inches high from one of his low bookcases. "You can
see where his leg is glued on,--a souvenir. Yes, he's
lemon amber, very fine."

Landry disappeared behind the curtains and in a moment
Fred heard the wheeze of an atomizer. He put the amber
elephant on the piano beside him and seemed to get a great
deal of amusement out of the beast.

WHEN Archie and Ottenburg dined with Thea on
Saturday evening, they were served downstairs in
the hotel dining-room, but they were to have their coffee
in her own apartment. As they were going up in the ele-
vator after dinner, Fred turned suddenly to Thea. "And
why, please, did you break Landry's amber elephant?"

She looked guilty and began to laugh. "Hasn't he got
over that yet? I didn't really mean to break it. I was per-
haps careless. His things are so over-petted that I was
tempted to be careless with a lot of them."

"How can you be so heartless, when they're all he has
in the world?"

"He has me. I'm a great deal of diversion for him; all he
needs. There," she said as she opened the door into her
own hall, "I shouldn't have said that before the elevator
boy."

"Even an elevator boy couldn't make a scandal about
Oliver. He's such a catnip man."

Dr. Archie laughed, but Thea, who seemed suddenly to
have thought of something annoying, repeated blankly,
"Catnip man?"

"Yes, he lives on catnip, and rum tea. But he's not the
only one. You are like an eccentric old woman I know in
Boston, who goes about in the spring feeding catnip to
street cats. You dispense it to a lot of fellows. Your pull
seems to be more with men than with women, you know;
with seasoned men, about my age, or older. Even on Fri-
day afternoon I kept running into them, old boys I hadn't
seen for years, thin at the part and thick at the girth, until
I stood still in the draft and held my hair on. They're al-
ways there; I hear them talking about you in the smoking-

room. Probably we don't get to the point of apprehending
anything good until we're about forty. Then, in the light
of what is going, and of what, God help us! is coming, we
arrive at understanding."

"I don't see why people go to the opera, anyway,--seri-
ous people." She spoke discontentedly. "I suppose they
get something, or think they do. Here's the coffee. There,
please," she directed the waiter. Going to the table she be-
gan to pour the coffee, standing. She wore a white dress
trimmed with crystals which had rattled a good deal dur-
ing dinner, as all her movements had been impatient and
nervous, and she had twisted the dark velvet rose at her
girdle until it looked rumpled and weary. She poured the
coffee as if it were a ceremony in which she did not believe.
"Can you make anything of Fred's nonsense, Dr. Archie?"
she asked, as he came to take his cup.

Fred approached her. "My nonsense is all right. The
same brand has gone with you before. It's you who won't
be jollied. What's the matter? You have something on
your mind."

"I've a good deal. Too much to be an agreeable hos-
tess." She turned quickly away from the coffee and sat
down on the piano bench, facing the two men. "For one
thing, there's a change in the cast for Friday afternoon.
They're going to let me sing SIEGLINDE." Her frown did not
conceal the pleasure with which she made this announce-
ment.

"Are you going to keep us dangling about here forever,
Thea? Archie and I are supposed to have other things to
do." Fred looked at her with an excitement quite as ap-
parent as her own.

"Here I've been ready to sing SIEGLINDE for two years,
kept in torment, and now it comes off within two weeks,
just when I want to be seeing something of Dr. Archie. I
don't know what their plans are down there. After Friday
they may let me cool for several weeks, and they may rush

me. I suppose it depends somewhat on how things go Fri-
day afternoon."

"Oh, they'll go fast enough! That's better suited to
your voice than anything you've sung here. That gives
you every opportunity I've waited for." Ottenburg
crossed the room and standing beside her began to play
"DU BIST DER LENZ."

With a violent movement Thea caught his wrists and
pushed his hands away from the keys.

"Fred, can't you be serious? A thousand things may
happen between this and Friday to put me out. Some-
thing will happen. If that part were sung well, as well as
it ought to be, it would be one of the most beautiful things
in the world. That's why it never is sung right, and never
will be." She clenched her hands and opened them de-
spairingly, looking out of the open window. "It's inac-
cessibly beautiful!" she brought out sharply.

Fred and Dr. Archie watched her. In a moment she
turned back to them. "It's impossible to sing a part like
that well for the first time, except for the sort who will
never sing it any better. Everything hangs on that first
night, and that's bound to be bad. There you are," she
shrugged impatiently. "For one thing, they change the
cast at the eleventh hour and then rehearse the life out of
me."

Ottenburg put down his cup with exaggerated care.
"Still, you really want to do it, you know."

"Want to?" she repeated indignantly; "of course I want
to! If this were only next Thursday night-- But between
now and Friday I'll do nothing but fret away my strength.
Oh, I'm not saying I don't need the rehearsals! But I
don't need them strung out through a week. That sys-
tem's well enough for phlegmatic singers; it only drains
me. Every single feature of operatic routine is detri-
mental to me. I usually go on like a horse that's been
fixed to lose a race. I have to work hard to do my worst,

let alone my best. I wish you could hear me sing well,
once," she turned to Fred defiantly; "I have, a few times
in my life, when there was nothing to gain by it."

Fred approached her again and held out his hand. "I
recall my instructions, and now I'll leave you to fight it out
with Archie. He can't possibly represent managerial stu-
pidity to you as I seem to have a gift for doing."

As he smiled down at her, his good humor, his good
wishes, his understanding, embarrassed her and recalled
her to herself. She kept her seat, still holding his hand.
"All the same, Fred, isn't it too bad, that there are so
many things--" She broke off with a shake of the head.

"My dear girl, if I could bridge over the agony between
now and Friday for you-- But you know the rules of the
game; why torment yourself? You saw the other night
that you had the part under your thumb. Now walk, sleep,
play with Archie, keep your tiger hungry, and she'll spring
all right on Friday. I'll be there to see her, and there'll be
more than I, I suspect. Harsanyi's on the Wilhelm der
Grosse; gets in on Thursday."

"Harsanyi?" Thea's eye lighted. "I haven't seen him
for years. We always miss each other." She paused, hesi-
tating. "Yes, I should like that. But he'll be busy, may-
be?"

"He gives his first concert at Carnegie Hall, week after
next. Better send him a box if you can."

"Yes, I'll manage it." Thea took his hand again. "Oh,
I should like that, Fred!" she added impulsively. "Even
if I were put out, he'd get the idea,"--she threw back
her head,--"for there is an idea!"

"Which won't penetrate here," he tapped his brow and
began to laugh. "You are an ungrateful huzzy, COMME LES
AUTRES!"

Thea detained him as he turned away. She pulled a
flower out of a bouquet on the piano and absently drew
the stem through the lapel of his coat. "I shall be walking

in the Park to-morrow afternoon, on the reservoir path,
between four and five, if you care to join me. You know
that after Harsanyi I'd rather please you than anyone else.
You know a lot, but he knows even more than you."

"Thank you. Don't try to analyze it. SCHLAFEN SIE
WOHL!" he kissed her fingers and waved from the door,
closing it behind him.

"He's the right sort, Thea." Dr. Archie looked warmly
after his disappearing friend. "I've always hoped you'd
make it up with Fred."

"Well, haven't I? Oh, marry him, you mean! Perhaps
it may come about, some day. Just at present he's not
in the marriage market any more than I am, is he?"

"No, I suppose not. It's a damned shame that a man
like Ottenburg should be tied up as he is, wasting all the
best years of his life. A woman with general paresis ought
to be legally dead."

"Don't let us talk about Fred's wife, please. He had no
business to get into such a mess, and he had no business to
stay in it. He's always been a softy where women were
concerned."

"Most of us are, I'm afraid," Dr. Archie admitted
meekly.

"Too much light in here, isn't there? Tires one's eyes.
The stage lights are hard on mine." Thea began turning
them out. "We'll leave the little one, over the piano."
She sank down by Archie on the deep sofa. "We two have
so much to talk about that we keep away from it altogether;
have you noticed? We don't even nibble the edges. I wish
we had Landry here to-night to play for us. He's very
comforting."

"I'm afraid you don't have enough personal life, outside
your work, Thea." The doctor looked at her anxiously.

She smiled at him with her eyes half closed. "My dear
doctor, I don't have any. Your work becomes your per-
sonal life. You are not much good until it does. It's like

being woven into a big web. You can't pull away, because
all your little tendrils are woven into the picture. It takes
you up, and uses you, and spins you out; and that is your
life. Not much else can happen to you."

"Didn't you think of marrying, several years ago?"

"You mean Nordquist? Yes; but I changed my mind.
We had been singing a good deal together. He's a splendid
creature."

"Were you much in love with him, Thea?" the doctor
asked hopefully.

She smiled again. "I don't think I know just what that
expression means. I've never been able to find out. I
think I was in love with you when I was little, but not
with any one since then. There are a great many ways of
caring for people. It's not, after all, a simple state, like
measles or tonsilitis. Nordquist is a taking sort of man.
He and I were out in a rowboat once in a terrible storm.
The lake was fed by glaciers,--ice water,--and we
couldn't have swum a stroke if the boat had filled. If we
hadn't both been strong and kept our heads, we'd have
gone down. We pulled for every ounce there was in us,
and we just got off with our lives. We were always being
thrown together like that, under some kind of pressure.
Yes, for a while I thought he would make everything
right." She paused and sank back, resting her head on a
cushion, pressing her eyelids down with her fingers. "You
see," she went on abruptly, "he had a wife and two chil-
dren. He hadn't lived with her for several years, but
when she heard that he wanted to marry again, she began
to make trouble. He earned a good deal of money, but he
was careless and always wretchedly in debt. He came to
me one day and told me he thought his wife would settle
for a hundred thousand marks and consent to a divorce.
I got very angry and sent him away. Next day he came
back and said he thought she'd take fifty thousand."

Dr. Archie drew away from her, to the end of the sofa.

"Good God, Thea,"-- He ran his handkerchief over his
forehead. "What sort of people--" He stopped and shook
his head.

Thea rose and stood beside him, her hand on his shoul-
der. "That's exactly how it struck me," she said quietly.
"Oh, we have things in common, things that go away back,
under everything. You understand, of course. Nordquist
didn't. He thought I wasn't willing to part with the
money. I couldn't let myself buy him from Fru Nord-
quist, and he couldn't see why. He had always thought I
was close about money, so he attributed it to that. I am
careful,"--she ran her arm through Archie's and when
he rose began to walk about the room with him. "I
can't be careless with money. I began the world on six
hundred dollars, and it was the price of a man's life. Ray
Kennedy had worked hard and been sober and denied him-
self, and when he died he had six hundred dollars to show
for it. I always measure things by that six hundred dol-
lars, just as I measure high buildings by the Moonstone
standpipe. There are standards we can't get away from."

Dr. Archie took her hand. "I don't believe we should
be any happier if we did get away from them. I think it
gives you some of your poise, having that anchor. You
look," glancing down at her head and shoulders, "some-
times so like your mother."

"Thank you. You couldn't say anything nicer to me
than that. On Friday afternoon, didn't you think?"

"Yes, but at other times, too. I love to see it. Do you
know what I thought about that first night when I heard
you sing? I kept remembering the night I took care of you
when you had pneumonia, when you were ten years old.
You were a terribly sick child, and I was a country doctor
without much experience. There were no oxygen tanks
about then. You pretty nearly slipped away from me.
If you had--"

Thea dropped her head on his shoulder. "I'd have

saved myself and you a lot of trouble, wouldn't I? Dear
Dr. Archie!" she murmured.

"As for me, life would have been a pretty bleak stretch,
with you left out." The doctor took one of the crystal
pendants that hung from her shoulder and looked into it
thoughtfully. "I guess I'm a romantic old fellow, under-
neath. And you've always been my romance. Those
years when you were growing up were my happiest. When
I dream about you, I always see you as a little girl."

They paused by the open window. "Do you? Nearly
all my dreams, except those about breaking down on the
stage or missing trains, are about Moonstone. You tell
me the old house has been pulled down, but it stands in
my mind, every stick and timber. In my sleep I go all
about it, and look in the right drawers and cupboards for
everything. I often dream that I'm hunting for my rub-
bers in that pile of overshoes that was always under the
hatrack in the hall. I pick up every overshoe and know
whose it is, but I can't find my own. Then the school bell
begins to ring and I begin to cry. That's the house I rest
in when I'm tired. All the old furniture and the worn
spots in the carpet--it rests my mind to go over them."

They were looking out of the window. Thea kept his
arm. Down on the river four battleships were anchored in
line, brilliantly lighted, and launches were coming and
going, bringing the men ashore. A searchlight from one
of the ironclads was playing on the great headland up the
river, where it makes its first resolute turn. Overhead the
night-blue sky was intense and clear.

"There's so much that I want to tell you," she said at
last, "and it's hard to explain. My life is full of jealousies
and disappointments, you know. You get to hating people
who do contemptible work and who get on just as well as you
do. There are many disappointments in my profession, and
bitter, bitter contempts!" Her face hardened, and looked
much older. "If you love the good thing vitally, enough to

give up for it all that one must give up for it, then you
must hate the cheap thing just as hard. I tell you, there
is such a thing as creative hate! A contempt that drives
you through fire, makes you risk everything and lose
everything, makes you a long sight better than you ever
knew you could be." As she glanced at Dr. Archie's face,
Thea stopped short and turned her own face away. Her
eyes followed the path of the searchlight up the river and
rested upon the illumined headland.

"You see," she went on more calmly, "voices are acci-
dental things. You find plenty of good voices in common
women, with common minds and common hearts. Look
at that woman who sang ORTRUDE with me last week. She's
new here and the people are wild about her. `Such a beau-
tiful volume of tone!' they say. I give you my word she's
as stupid as an owl and as coarse as a pig, and any one
who knows anything about singing would see that in an
instant. Yet she's quite as popular as Necker, who's a
great artist. How can I get much satisfaction out of the
enthusiasm of a house that likes her atrociously bad per-
formance at the same time that it pretends to like mine?
If they like her, then they ought to hiss me off the stage.
We stand for things that are irreconcilable, absolutely.
You can't try to do things right and not despise the peo-
ple who do them wrong. How can I be indifferent? If
that doesn't matter, then nothing matters. Well, some-
times I've come home as I did the other night when you
first saw me, so full of bitterness that it was as if my mind
were full of daggers. And I've gone to sleep and wakened
up in the Kohlers' garden, with the pigeons and the white
rabbits, so happy! And that saves me." She sat down
on the piano bench. Archie thought she had forgotten all
about him, until she called his name. Her voice was soft
now, and wonderfully sweet. It seemed to come from some-
where deep within her, there were such strong vibrations
in it. "You see, Dr. Archie, what one really strives for in

art is not the sort of thing you are likely to find when
you drop in for a performance at the opera. What one
strives for is so far away, so deep, so beautiful"--she
lifted her shoulders with a long breath, folded her hands
in her lap and sat looking at him with a resignation that
made her face noble,--"that there's nothing one can
say about it, Dr. Archie."

Without knowing very well what it was all about,
Archie was passionately stirred for her. "I've always be-
lieved in you, Thea; always believed," he muttered.

She smiled and closed her eyes. "They save me: the old
things, things like the Kohlers' garden. They are in every-
thing I do."

"In what you sing, you mean?"

"Yes. Not in any direct way,"--she spoke hurriedly,
--"the light, the color, the feeling. Most of all the feeling.
It comes in when I'm working on a part, like the smell of
a garden coming in at the window. I try all the new
things, and then go back to the old. Perhaps my feelings
were stronger then. A child's attitude toward everything
is an artist's attitude. I am more or less of an artist now,
but then I was nothing else. When I went with you to
Chicago that first time, I carried with me the essentials,
the foundation of all I do now. The point to which I could
go was scratched in me then. I haven't reached it yet, by
a long way."

Archie had a swift flash of memory. Pictures passed
before him. "You mean," he asked wonderingly, "that
you knew then that you were so gifted?"

Thea looked up at him and smiled. "Oh, I didn't know
anything! Not enough to ask you for my trunk when I
needed it. But you see, when I set out from Moonstone
with you, I had had a rich, romantic past. I had lived a
long, eventful life, and an artist's life, every hour of it.
Wagner says, in his most beautiful opera, that art is only
a way of remembering youth. And the older we grow the

more precious it seems to us, and the more richly we can
present that memory. When we've got it all out,--the
last, the finest thrill of it, the brightest hope of it,"--she
lifted her hand above her head and dropped it,--"then
we stop. We do nothing but repeat after that. The stream
has reached the level of its source. That's our measure."

There was a long, warm silence. Thea was looking hard
at the floor, as if she were seeing down through years and
years, and her old friend stood watching her bent head.
His look was one with which he used to watch her long
ago, and which, even in thinking about her, had become a
habit of his face. It was full of solicitude, and a kind of
secret gratitude, as if to thank her for some inexpressible
pleasure of the heart. Thea turned presently toward the
piano and began softly to waken an old air:--

"Ca' the yowes to the knowes,

Ca' them where the heather grows,

Ca' them where the burnie rowes,

My bonnie dear-ie."

Archie sat down and shaded his eyes with his hand. She
turned her head and spoke to him over her shoulder.
"Come on, you know the words better than I. That's
right."

"We'll gae down by Clouden's side,

Through the hazels spreading wide,

O'er the waves that sweetly glide,

To the moon sae clearly.

Ghaist nor bogle shalt thou fear,

Thou'rt to love and Heav'n sae dear,

Nocht of ill may come thee near,

My bonnie dear-ie!"

"We can get on without Landry. Let's try it again, I
have all the words now. Then we'll have `Sweet Afton.'
Come: `CA' THE YOWES TO THE KNOWES'--"

OTTENBURG dismissed his taxicab at the 91st Street
entrance of the Park and floundered across the drive
through a wild spring snowstorm. When he reached the
reservoir path he saw Thea ahead of him, walking rapidly
against the wind. Except for that one figure, the path was
deserted. A flock of gulls were hovering over the reservoir,
seeming bewildered by the driving currents of snow that
whirled above the black water and then disappeared with-
in it. When he had almost overtaken Thea, Fred called
to her, and she turned and waited for him with her back
to the wind. Her hair and furs were powdered with snow-
flakes, and she looked like some rich-pelted animal, with
warm blood, that had run in out of the woods. Fred
laughed as he took her hand.

"No use asking how you do. You surely needn't feel
much anxiety about Friday, when you can look like
this."

She moved close to the iron fence to make room for him
beside her, and faced the wind again. "Oh, I'm WELL enough,
in so far as that goes. But I'm not lucky about stage
appearances. I'm easily upset, and the most perverse
things happen."

"What's the matter? Do you still get nervous?"

"Of course I do. I don't mind nerves so much as getting
numbed," Thea muttered, sheltering her face for a mo-
ment with her muff. "I'm under a spell, you know, hoo-
dooed. It's the thing I WANT to do that I can never do.
Any other effects I can get easily enough."

"Yes, you get effects, and not only with your voice.
That's where you have it over all the rest of them; you're
as much at home on the stage as you were down in

Panther Canyon--as if you'd just been let out of a cage.
Didn't you get some of your ideas down there?"

Thea nodded. "Oh, yes! For heroic parts, at least. Out
of the rocks, out of the dead people. You mean the idea
of standing up under things, don't you, meeting catas-
trophe? No fussiness. Seems to me they must have been
a reserved, somber people, with only a muscular language,
all their movements for a purpose; simple, strong, as if
they were dealing with fate bare-handed." She put her
gloved fingers on Fred's arm. "I don't know how I can
ever thank you enough. I don't know if I'd ever have got
anywhere without Panther Canyon. How did you know
that was the one thing to do for me? It's the sort of thing
nobody ever helps one to, in this world. One can learn how
to sing, but no singing teacher can give anybody what I
got down there. How did you know?"

"I didn't know. Anything else would have done as well.
It was your creative hour. I knew you were getting a lot,
but I didn't realize how much."

Thea walked on in silence. She seemed to be thinking.

"Do you know what they really taught me?" she
came out suddenly. "They taught me the inevitable
hardness of human life. No artist gets far who doesn't
know that. And you can't know it with your mind. You
have to realize it in your body, somehow; deep. It's an
animal sort of feeling. I sometimes think it's the strongest
of all. Do you know what I'm driving at?"

"I think so. Even your audiences feel it, vaguely: that
you've sometime or other faced things that make you
different."

Thea turned her back to the wind, wiping away the snow
that clung to her brows and lashes. "Ugh!" she exclaimed;
"no matter how long a breath you have, the storm has
a longer. I haven't signed for next season, yet, Fred. I'm
holding out for a big contract: forty performances. Necker
won't be able to do much next winter. It's going to be one

of those between seasons; the old singers are too old, and
the new ones are too new. They might as well risk me as
anybody. So I want good terms. The next five or six
years are going to be my best."

"You'll get what you demand, if you are uncompro-
mising. I'm safe in congratulating you now."

Thea laughed. "It's a little early. I may not get it at
all. They don't seem to be breaking their necks to meet
me. I can go back to Dresden."

As they turned the curve and walked westward they
got the wind from the side, and talking was easier.

Fred lowered his collar and shook the snow from his
shoulders. "Oh, I don't mean on the contract particularly.
I congratulate you on what you can do, Thea, and on all
that lies behind what you do. On the life that's led up to
it, and on being able to care so much. That, after all, is
the unusual thing."

She looked at him sharply, with a certain apprehension.
"Care? Why shouldn't I care? If I didn't, I'd be in a
bad way. What else have I got?" She stopped with a
challenging interrogation, but Ottenburg did not reply.
"You mean," she persisted, "that you don't care as much
as you used to?"

"I care about your success, of course." Fred fell into a
slower pace. Thea felt at once that he was talking seri-
ously and had dropped the tone of half-ironical exaggera-
tion he had used with her of late years. "And I'm
grateful to you for what you demand from yourself, when
you might get off so easily. You demand more and more
all the time, and you'll do more and more. One is grateful
to anybody for that; it makes life in general a little less
sordid. But as a matter of fact, I'm not much interested
in how anybody sings anything."

"That's too bad of you, when I'm just beginning to
see what is worth doing, and how I want to do it!" Thea
spoke in an injured tone.

"That's what I congratulate you on. That's the great
difference between your kind and the rest of us. It's how
long you're able to keep it up that tells the story. When
you needed enthusiasm from the outside, I was able to
give it to you. Now you must let me withdraw."

"I'm not tying you, am I?" she flashed out. "But with-
draw to what? What do you want?"

Fred shrugged. "I might ask you, What have I got?
I want things that wouldn't interest you; that you prob-
ably wouldn't understand. For one thing, I want a son
to bring up."

"I can understand that. It seems to me reasonable.
Have you also found somebody you want to marry?"

"Not particularly." They turned another curve, which
brought the wind to their backs, and they walked on in
comparative calm, with the snow blowing past them. "It's
not your fault, Thea, but I've had you too much in my
mind. I've not given myself a fair chance in other direc-
tions. I was in Rome when you and Nordquist were there.
If that had kept up, it might have cured me."

"It might have cured a good many things," remarked
Thea grimly.

Fred nodded sympathetically and went on. "In my
library in St. Louis, over the fireplace, I have a property
spear I had copied from one in Venice,--oh, years ago,
after you first went abroad, while you were studying.
You'll probably be singing BRUNNHILDE pretty soon now,
and I'll send it on to you, if I may. You can take it and
its history for what they're worth. But I'm nearly forty
years old, and I've served my turn. You've done what
I hoped for you, what I was honestly willing to lose you
for--then. I'm older now, and I think I was an ass. I
wouldn't do it again if I had the chance, not much! But
I'm not sorry. It takes a great many people to make
one--BRUNNHILDE."

Thea stopped by the fence and looked over into the

black choppiness on which the snowflakes fell and dis-
appeared with magical rapidity. Her face was both angry
and troubled. "So you really feel I've been ungrateful.
I thought you sent me out to get something. I didn't
know you wanted me to bring in something easy. I
thought you wanted something--" She took a deep
breath and shrugged her shoulders. "But there! nobody
on God's earth wants it, REALLY! If one other person wanted
it,"--she thrust her hand out before him and clenched
it,--"my God, what I could do!"

Fred laughed dismally. "Even in my ashes I feel my-
self pushing you! How can anybody help it? My dear
girl, can't you see that anybody else who wanted it as you
do would be your rival, your deadliest danger? Can't you
see that it's your great good fortune that other people
can't care about it so much?"

But Thea seemed not to take in his protest at all. She
went on vindicating herself. "It's taken me a long while
to do anything, of course, and I've only begun to see day-
light. But anything good is--expensive. It hasn't
seemed long. I've always felt responsible to you."

Fred looked at her face intently, through the veil of
snowflakes, and shook his head. "To me? You are a truth-
ful woman, and you don't mean to lie to me. But after the
one responsibility you do feel, I doubt if you've enough
left to feel responsible to God! Still, if you've ever in an
idle hour fooled yourself with thinking I had anything to
do with it, Heaven knows I'm grateful."

"Even if I'd married Nordquist," Thea went on, turn-
ing down the path again, "there would have been some-
thing left out. There always is. In a way, I've always been
married to you. I'm not very flexible; never was and never
shall be. You caught me young. I could never have that
over again. One can't, after one begins to know anything.
But I look back on it. My life hasn't been a gay one, any
more than yours. If I shut things out from you, you shut

them out from me. We've been a help and a hindrance to
each other. I guess it's always that way, the good and the
bad all mixed up. There's only one thing that's all beau-
tiful--and always beautiful! That's why my interest keeps
up."

"Yes, I know." Fred looked sidewise at the outline of
her head against the thickening atmosphere. "And you
give one the impression that that is enough. I've gradu-
ally, gradually given you up."

"See, the lights are coming out." Thea pointed to where
they flickered, flashes of violet through the gray tree-tops.
Lower down the globes along the drives were becoming a
pale lemon color. "Yes, I don't see why anybody wants
to marry an artist, anyhow. I remember Ray Kennedy
used to say he didn't see how any woman could marry a
gambler, for she would only be marrying what the game
left." She shook her shoulders impatiently. "Who marries
who is a small matter, after all. But I hope I can bring
back your interest in my work. You've cared longer and
more than anybody else, and I'd like to have somebody
human to make a report to once in a while. You can send
me your spear. I'll do my best. If you're not interested,
I'll do my best anyhow. I've only a few friends, but I
can lose every one of them, if it has to be. I learned how
to lose when my mother died.-- We must hurry now. My
taxi must be waiting."

The blue light about them was growing deeper and
darker, and the falling snow and the faint trees had be-
come violet. To the south, over Broadway, there was an
orange reflection in the clouds. Motors and carriage lights
flashed by on the drive below the reservoir path, and the
air was strident with horns and shrieks from the whistles
of the mounted policemen.

Fred gave Thea his arm as they descended from the
embankment. "I guess you'll never manage to lose me or
Archie, Thea. You do pick up queer ones. But loving

you is a heroic discipline. It wears a man out. Tell me
one thing: could I have kept you, once, if I'd put on every
screw?"

Thea hurried him along, talking rapidly, as if to get it
over. "You might have kept me in misery for a while,
perhaps. I don't know. I have to think well of myself, to
work. You could have made it hard. I'm not ungrateful.
I was a difficult proposition to deal with. I understand now,
of course. Since you didn't tell me the truth in the be-
ginning, you couldn't very well turn back after I'd set
my head. At least, if you'd been the sort who could, you
wouldn't have had to,--for I'd not have cared a button
for that sort, even then." She stopped beside a car that
waited at the curb and gave him her hand. "There. We
part friends?"

Fred looked at her. "You know. Ten years."

"I'm not ungrateful," Thea repeated as she got into
her cab.

"Yes," she reflected, as the taxi cut into the Park carriage
road, "we don't get fairy tales in this world, and he has,
after all, cared more and longer than anybody else." It
was dark outside now, and the light from the lamps along
the drive flashed into the cab. The snowflakes hovered
like swarms of white bees about the globes.

Thea sat motionless in one corner staring out of the
window at the cab lights that wove in and out among
the trees, all seeming to be bent upon joyous courses.
Taxicabs were still new in New York, and the theme of
popular minstrelsy. Landry had sung her a ditty he heard
in some theater on Third Avenue, about

"But there passed him a bright-eyed taxi

With the girl of his heart inside."

Almost inaudibly Thea began to hum the air, though she
was thinking of something serious, something that had
touched her deeply. At the beginning of the season, when

she was not singing often, she had gone one afternoon to
hear Paderewski's recital. In front of her sat an old Ger-
man couple, evidently poor people who had made sacri-
fices to pay for their excellent seats. Their intelligent
enjoyment of the music, and their friendliness with each
other, had interested her more than anything on the pro-
gramme. When the pianist began a lovely melody in the
first movement of the Beethoven D minor sonata, the
old lady put out her plump hand and touched her hus-
band's sleeve and they looked at each other in recognition.
They both wore glasses, but such a look! Like forget-me-
nots, and so full of happy recollections. Thea wanted to
put her arms around them and ask them how they had
been able to keep a feeling like that, like a nosegay in a
glass of water.

DR. ARCHIE saw nothing of Thea during the follow-
ing week. After several fruitless efforts, he succeeded
in getting a word with her over the telephone, but she
sounded so distracted and driven that he was glad to say
good-night and hang up the instrument. There were, she
told him, rehearsals not only for "Walkure," but also for
"Gotterdammerung," in which she was to sing WALTRAUTE
two weeks later.

On Thursday afternoon Thea got home late, after an
exhausting rehearsal. She was in no happy frame of mind.
Madame Necker, who had been very gracious to her
that night when she went on to complete Gloeckler's
performance of SIEGLINDE, had, since Thea was cast to sing
the part instead of Gloeckler in the production of the
"Ring," been chilly and disapproving, distinctly hostile.
Thea had always felt that she and Necker stood for the
same sort of endeavor, and that Necker recognized it and
had a cordial feeling for her. In Germany she had several
times sung BRANGAENA to Necker's ISOLDE, and the older
artist had let her know that she thought she sang it beau-
tifully. It was a bitter disappointment to find that the
approval of so honest an artist as Necker could not stand
the test of any significant recognition by the management.
Madame Necker was forty, and her voice was failing just
when her powers were at their height. Every fresh young
voice was an enemy, and this one was accompanied by
gifts which she could not fail to recognize.

Thea had her dinner sent up to her apartment, and it
was a very poor one. She tasted the soup and then indig-
nantly put on her wraps to go out and hunt a dinner. As
she was going to the elevator, she had to admit that she

was behaving foolishly. She took off her hat and coat
and ordered another dinner. When it arrived, it was no
better than the first. There was even a burnt match under
the milk toast. She had a sore throat, which made swal-
lowing painful and boded ill for the morrow. Although she
had been speaking in whispers all day to save her throat,
she now perversely summoned the housekeeper and de-
manded an account of some laundry that had been lost.
The housekeeper was indifferent and impertinent, and
Thea got angry and scolded violently. She knew it was
very bad for her to get into a rage just before bedtime, and
after the housekeeper left she realized that for ten dollars'
worth of underclothing she had been unfitting herself for
a performance which might eventually mean many thous-
ands. The best thing now was to stop reproaching herself
for her lack of sense, but she was too tired to control her
thoughts.

While she was undressing--Therese was brushing out
her SIEGLINDE wig in the trunk-room--she went on chid-
ing herself bitterly. "And how am I ever going to get to
sleep in this state?" she kept asking herself. "If I don't
sleep, I'll be perfectly worthless to-morrow. I'll go down
there to-morrow and make a fool of myself. If I'd let that
laundry alone with whatever nigger has stolen it-- WHY
did I undertake to reform the management of this hotel
to-night? After to-morrow I could pack up and leave the
place. There's the Phillamon--I liked the rooms there
better, anyhow--and the Umberto--" She began going
over the advantages and disadvantages of different apart-
ment hotels. Suddenly she checked herself. "What AM
I doing this for? I can't move into another hotel to-night.
I'll keep this up till morning. I shan't sleep a wink."

Should she take a hot bath, or shouldn't she? Some-
times it relaxed her, and sometimes it roused her and fairly
put her beside herself. Between the conviction that she
must sleep and the fear that she couldn't, she hung para-

lyzed. When she looked at her bed, she shrank from it in
every nerve. She was much more afraid of it than she had
ever been of the stage of any opera house. It yawned be-
fore her like the sunken road at Waterloo.

She rushed into her bathroom and locked the door. She
would risk the bath, and defer the encounter with the bed a
little longer. She lay in the bath half an hour. The warmth
of the water penetrated to her bones, induced pleasant
reflections and a feeling of well-being. It was very nice to
have Dr. Archie in New York, after all, and to see him get
so much satisfaction out of the little companionship she
was able to give him. She liked people who got on, and
who became more interesting as they grew older. There
was Fred; he was much more interesting now than he had
been at thirty. He was intelligent about music, and he
must be very intelligent in his business, or he would not
be at the head of the Brewers' Trust. She respected that
kind of intelligence and success. Any success was good.
She herself had made a good start, at any rate, and now,
if she could get to sleep-- Yes, they were all more inter-
esting than they used to be. Look at Harsanyi, who had
been so long retarded; what a place he had made for him-
self in Vienna. If she could get to sleep, she would show
him something to-morrow that he would understand.

She got quickly into bed and moved about freely be-
tween the sheets. Yes, she was warm all over. A cold,
dry breeze was coming in from the river, thank goodness!
She tried to think about her little rock house and the Ari-
zona sun and the blue sky. But that led to memories which
were still too disturbing. She turned on her side, closed
her eyes, and tried an old device.

She entered her father's front door, hung her hat and
coat on the rack, and stopped in the parlor to warm her
hands at the stove. Then she went out through the dining-
room, where the boys were getting their lessons at the long
table; through the sitting-room, where Thor was asleep in

his cot bed, his dress and stocking hanging on a chair. In
the kitchen she stopped for her lantern and her hot brick.
She hurried up the back stairs and through the windy loft
to her own glacial room. The illusion was marred only by
the consciousness that she ought to brush her teeth before
she went to bed, and that she never used to do it. Why--?
The water was frozen solid in the pitcher, so she got over
that. Once between the red blankets there was a short,
fierce battle with the cold; then, warmer--warmer. She
could hear her father shaking down the hard-coal burner
for the night, and the wind rushing and banging down the
village street. The boughs of the cottonwood, hard as
bone, rattled against her gable. The bed grew softer and
warmer. Everybody was warm and well downstairs. The
sprawling old house had gathered them all in, like a hen,
and had settled down over its brood. They were all warm
in her father's house. Softer and softer. She was asleep.
She slept ten hours without turning over. From sleep like
that, one awakes in shining armor.

On Friday afternoon there was an inspiring audience;
there was not an empty chair in the house. Ottenburg
and Dr. Archie had seats in the orchestra circle, got from
a ticket broker. Landry had not been able to get a seat,
so he roamed about in the back of the house, where he
usually stood when he dropped in after his own turn in
vaudeville was over. He was there so often and at such
irregular hours that the ushers thought he was a singer's
husband, or had something to do with the electrical
plant.

Harsanyi and his wife were in a box, near the stage,
in the second circle. Mrs. Harsanyi's hair was noticeably
gray, but her face was fuller and handsomer than in those
early years of struggle, and she was beautifully dressed.
Harsanyi himself had changed very little. He had put on
his best afternoon coat in honor of his pupil, and wore a

pearl in his black ascot. His hair was longer and more
bushy than he used to wear it, and there was now one
gray lock on the right side. He had always been an elegant
figure, even when he went about in shabby clothes and
was crushed with work. Before the curtain rose he was
restless and nervous, and kept looking at his watch and
wishing he had got a few more letters off before he left his
hotel. He had not been in New York since the advent of
the taxicab, and had allowed himself too much time. His
wife knew that he was afraid of being disappointed this
afternoon. He did not often go to the opera because the
stupid things that singers did vexed him so, and it always
put him in a rage if the conductor held the tempo or in
any way accommodated the score to the singer.

When the lights went out and the violins began to
quaver their long D against the rude figure of the basses,
Mrs. Harsanyi saw her husband's fingers fluttering on his
knee in a rapid tattoo. At the moment when SIEGLINDE
entered from the side door, she leaned toward him and
whispered in his ear, "Oh, the lovely creature!" But he
made no response, either by voice or gesture. Throughout
the first scene he sat sunk in his chair, his head forward
and his one yellow eye rolling restlessly and shining like a
tiger's in the dark. His eye followed SIEGLINDE about the
stage like a satellite, and as she sat at the table listening to
SIEGMUND'S long narrative, it never left her. When she
prepared the sleeping draught and disappeared after
HUNDING, Harsanyi bowed his head still lower and put
his hand over his eye to rest it. The tenor,--a young
man who sang with great vigor, went on:--

"WALSE! WALSE!
WO IST DEIN SCHWERT?"

Harsanyi smiled, but he did not look forth again until
SIEGLINDE reappeared. She went through the story of her
shameful bridal feast and into the Walhall' music, which

she always sang so nobly, and the entrance of the one-
eyed stranger:--

"MIR ALLEIN
WECKTE DAS AUGE."

Mrs. Harsanyi glanced at her husband, wondering whether
the singer on the stage could not feel his commanding
glance. On came the CRESCENDO:--

"WAS JE ICH VERLOR,
WAS JE ICH BEWEINT
WAR' MIR GEWONNEN."

(All that I have lost,
All that I have mourned,
Would I then have won.)

Harsanyi touched his wife's arm softly.

Seated in the moonlight, the VOLSUNG pair began their
loving inspection of each other's beauties, and the music
born of murmuring sound passed into her face, as the old
poet said,--and into her body as well. Into one lovely
attitude after another the music swept her, love impelled
her. And the voice gave out all that was best in it. Like
the spring, indeed, it blossomed into memories and prophe-
cies, it recounted and it foretold, as she sang the story of
her friendless life, and of how the thing which was truly
herself, "bright as the day, rose to the surface" when in
the hostile world she for the first time beheld her Friend.
Fervently she rose into the hardier feeling of action and
daring, the pride in hero-strength and hero-blood, until in
a splendid burst, tall and shining like a Victory, she chris-
tened him:--

"SIEGMUND--

SO NENN ICH DICH!"

Her impatience for the sword swelled with her antici-
pation of his act, and throwing her arms above her head,
she fairly tore a sword out of the empty air for him, before
NOTHUNG had left the tree. IN HOCHSTER TRUNKENHEIT, in-

deed, she burst out with the flaming cry of their kinship:
"If you are SIEGMUND, I am SIEGLINDE!" Laughing, sing-
ing, bounding, exulting,--with their passion and their
sword,--the VOLSUNGS ran out into the spring night.

As the curtain fell, Harsanyi turned to his wife. "At
last," he sighed, "somebody with ENOUGH! Enough voice
and talent and beauty, enough physical power. And such
a noble, noble style!"

"I can scarcely believe it, Andor. I can see her now, that
clumsy girl, hunched up over your piano. I can see her shoul-
ders. She always seemed to labor so with her back. And I
shall never forget that night when you found her voice."

The audience kept up its clamor until, after many re-
appearances with the tenor, Kronborg came before the cur-
tain alone. The house met her with a roar, a greeting that
was almost savage in its fierceness. The singer's eyes,
sweeping the house, rested for a moment on Harsanyi, and
she waved her long sleeve toward his box.

"She OUGHT to be pleased that you are here," said Mrs.
Harsanyi. "I wonder if she knows how much she owes to
you."

"She owes me nothing," replied her husband quickly.
"She paid her way. She always gave something back,
even then."

"I remember you said once that she would do nothing
common," said Mrs. Harsanyi thoughtfully.

"Just so. She might fail, die, get lost in the pack. But
if she achieved, it would be nothing common. There are
people whom one can trust for that. There is one way in
which they will never fail." Harsanyi retired into his own
reflections.

After the second act Fred Ottenburg brought Archie
to the Harsanyis' box and introduced him as an old friend
of Miss Kronborg. The head of a musical publishing house
joined them, bringing with him a journalist and the presi-
dent of a German singing society. The conversation was

chiefly about the new SIEGLINDE. Mrs. Harsanyi was gra-
cious and enthusiastic, her husband nervous and uncom-
municative. He smiled mechanically, and politely an-
swered questions addressed to him. "Yes, quite so." "Oh,
certainly." Every one, of course, said very usual things
with great conviction. Mrs. Harsanyi was used to hearing
and uttering the commonplaces which such occasions de-
manded. When her husband withdrew into the shadow,
she covered his retreat by her sympathy and cordiality.
In reply to a direct question from Ottenburg, Harsanyi
said, flinching, "ISOLDE? Yes, why not? She will sing all
the great roles, I should think."

The chorus director said something about "dramatic
temperament." The journalist insisted that it was "ex-
plosive force," "projecting power."

Ottenburg turned to Harsanyi. "What is it, Mr. Har-
sanyi? Miss Kronborg says if there is anything in her,
you are the man who can say what it is."

The journalist scented copy and was eager. "Yes, Har-
sanyi. You know all about her. What's her secret?"

Harsanyi rumpled his hair irritably and shrugged his
shoulders. "Her secret? It is every artist's secret,"--he
waved his hand,--"passion. That is all. It is an open
secret, and perfectly safe. Like heroism, it is inimitable
in cheap materials."

The lights went out. Fred and Archie left the box as
the second act came on.

Artistic growth is, more than it is anything else, a refining
of the sense of truthfulness. The stupid believe that to
be truthful is easy; only the artist, the great artist, knows
how difficult it is. That afternoon nothing new came to
Thea Kronborg, no enlightenment, no inspiration. She
merely came into full possession of things she had been
refining and perfecting for so long. Her inhibitions chanced
to be fewer than usual, and, within herself, she entered
into the inheritance that she herself had laid up, into the

fullness of the faith she had kept before she knew its name
or its meaning.

Often when she sang, the best she had was unavailable;
she could not break through to it, and every sort of dis-
traction and mischance came between it and her. But
this afternoon the closed roads opened, the gates dropped.
What she had so often tried to reach, lay under her hand.
She had only to touch an idea to make it live.

While she was on the stage she was conscious that every
movement was the right movement, that her body was
absolutely the instrument of her idea. Not for nothing
had she kept it so severely, kept it filled with such energy
and fire. All that deep-rooted vitality flowered in her
voice, her face, in her very finger-tips. She felt like a tree
bursting into bloom. And her voice was as flexible as her
body; equal to any demand, capable of every NUANCE.
With the sense of its perfect companionship, its entire
trustworthiness, she had been able to throw herself into
the dramatic exigencies of the part, everything in her at
its best and everything working together.

The third act came on, and the afternoon slipped by.
Thea Kronborg's friends, old and new, seated about the
house on different floors and levels, enjoyed her triumph
according to their natures. There was one there, whom
nobody knew, who perhaps got greater pleasure out of
that afternoon than Harsanyi himself. Up in the top gal-
lery a gray-haired little Mexican, withered and bright as
a string of peppers beside a'dobe door, kept praying and
cursing under his breath, beating on the brass railing
and shouting "Bravo! Bravo!" until he was repressed by
his neighbors.

He happened to be there because a Mexican band was
to be a feature of Barnum and Bailey's circus that year.
One of the managers of the show had traveled about the
Southwest, signing up a lot of Mexican musicians at low
wages, and had brought them to New York. Among them

was Spanish Johnny. After Mrs. Tellamantez died, Johnny
abandoned his trade and went out with his mandolin to
pick up a living for one. His irregularities had become
his regular mode of life.

When Thea Kronborg came out of the stage entrance
on Fortieth Street, the sky was still flaming with the last
rays of the sun that was sinking off behind the North
River. A little crowd of people was lingering about the
door--musicians from the orchestra who were waiting
for their comrades, curious young men, and some poorly
dressed girls who were hoping to get a glimpse of the
singer. She bowed graciously to the group, through her
veil, but she did not look to the right or left as she crossed
the sidewalk to her cab. Had she lifted her eyes an instant
and glanced out through her white scarf, she must have
seen the only man in the crowd who had removed his hat
when she emerged, and who stood with it crushed up in
his hand. And she would have known him, changed as he
was. His lustrous black hair was full of gray, and his face
was a good deal worn by the EXTASI, so that it seemed to
have shrunk away from his shining eyes and teeth and left
them too prominent. But she would have known him.
She passed so near that he could have touched her, and he
did not put on his hat until her taxi had snorted away.
Then he walked down Broadway with his hands in his
overcoat pockets, wearing a smile which embraced all the
stream of life that passed him and the lighted towers that
rose into the limpid blue of the evening sky. If the singer,
going home exhausted in her cab, was wondering what
was the good of it all, that smile, could she have seen it,
would have answered her. It is the only commensurate
answer.

Here we must leave Thea Kronborg. From this time
on the story of her life is the story of her achievement.
The growth of an artist is an intellectual and spiritual

development which can scarcely be followed in a personal
narrative. This story attempts to deal only with the sim-
ple and concrete beginnings which color and accent an
artist's work, and to give some account of how a Moon-
stone girl found her way out of a vague, easy-going world
into a life of disciplined endeavor. Any account of the
loyalty of young hearts to some exalted ideal, and the
passion with which they strive, will always, in some of
us, rekindle generous emotions.

The Song of the Larkby Willa Cather

Chapter 1-11

The Song of the Lark
by Willa Cather