the great opera house. He accepted it quietly, almost indifferently, and
stood waiting for the storm to die away, while his keen eyes, sweeping
the house, recognized here and there among the jewelled, bare-shouldered
women before him the faces of the black-gowned mourners to whom he had
sung in the afternoon. The sight brought Beatrix to his mind. He
wondered how she was passing the evening, whether, from under the
benumbing effects of the blow she had suffered, she were still sending a
thought, a hope for success in his direction. Unconsciously to himself,
his pulses were tingling and throbbing with the music, and the throb and
tingle brought back to him the memory of the pounding of his pulses,
that morning in the cottage, only a week before. He had almost yielded
to their sway; then he had rallied. He had gone through the shock of
Lorimer's death, through the hasty discussion of arrangements which had
followed, through the saying good-by, with a calmness that had steadied
Beatrix and had been a surprise, even to himself. It was more--He
roused himself abruptly to the consciousness that mechanically he had
been going through the scene with _Wagner_, and that the moment for his
cavatina had come.

Instinctively he squared his shoulders and raised his eyes. As he did
so, he caught sight of Bobby Dane, and the sight recalled to him the
half-dismissed thought of Beatrix. During the one measure of
introduction, Beatrix and _Marguerite_, the cottage and the Kermess went
whirling together through Thayer's brain, turning and twisting,
intermingling and separating again like the visions of delirium. For
that one measure, his operatic fate was trembling in the balance. Then
the artist triumphed. Steady and clear, yet burdened with infinite
sadness, his voice rang out, filling the wide spaces of the great house,
filling the smallest heart within it with its throbbing, passionate
power.

_"Yet the bravest heart may swell
In the moment of farewell."_

The house was rocking and ringing with applause, as the song died away;
but Thayer heard it with unheeding ears. His old destiny had fulfilled
itself. The chord which closed his cavatina had sealed his fame in
opera; but his fame was to him as ashes in his mouth. With that same
chord, he had wilfully bidden farewell, not to _Marguerite_, his sister,
but to Beatrix, the wife of his friend, Sidney Lorimer. And, as the
chord died away, with its death there also died his passi