g you want to
write?" she asked.

He smiled. "You're a wonder, Jennie," he said. "There is a new thing.
I'm simply swamped in it. It won't let me alone. It's been driving me
pretty nearly crazy. That's why it's been such perfect hell sticking to
this other thing. Jennie, it's another opera. A big one, full size. A
romantic fairy opera. I haven't got it in order yet. It isn't fit to
talk about. But it's about a princess, a little blue-eyed, pale-haired
princess, who is under a spell. She's dumb. She's dumb except in the
presence of her true lover. Do you see? They are trying to cure her and
they can't. But mysteriously in the night they hear her singing. Her
lover is with her, and they try to solve the mystery. Maybe they kill
him, I don't know. Or maybe they make him faithless to her. I don't know
whether there is a fairy story like that or whether I just made it up.
And I haven't worked it out at all. I haven't any words for it, no book,
nor anything. But I tell you it comes in waves, whole scenes from it.
I'd like a hundred hands to write it down with. I'd like to take one
header into it and never come up. And meanwhile I'm slugging away at
that other damned thing because Mrs. Wollaston and LaChaise want
it,--because it's the main chance."

She asked why he didn't tell them about the new idea and get them to
adopt it instead, but he greeted this suggestion with an impatient laugh.

"It would be absolutely impossible for Ravinia in the first place," he
said. "The thing would need as big a production as, oh, _Pelleas and
Melisande_. And then this woman could never sing it. She isn't the type.
This is different altogether from anything she could do. Oh, no, it's
quite hopeless until after I've succeeded with something else. But, oh,
my God, Jennie, if you could hear it!"

She had finished her repairs on his coat and rising now held it up to
him. While he was groping for the sleeves, she asked quietly, "Who is the
princess, Tony? The dumb little princess with the blue eyes."

For a second he stood just as he was, like one suddenly frozen, then he
settled into his coat, walked over to his work chair and dropped into it,
leaning forward and propping up his head with his hands. "Yes," he said.
"In a way, perhaps, there is some one. That's what I was going to tell
you about. She came in as quiet as a little ghost, just as Mrs.
Wollaston was beginning to sing and she sat down beside me without a
word. And somehow while we