than a little rude to take French leave. The student thought he was
bored, but in reality he was afraid. In spite of his agitation, he
waited. And bit by bit the magic spell of the opera took possession of
him and freed him from embarrassment.

The piece now going on was one of those romantic, wholly lyric poems in
which the actors are everything. The environment about them, the sense
of objectivity, played no role. The 'cellos, sighing with lassitude and
pity, lamented in gentle accord; the violins cut through the harmony
with sharp cries of rebellion and gay arpeggios. And the voice of the
tenor rose above that many-toned, protean, orchestrated poem with warm
persuasion, wailing into inconsolable laments.

Enrique got up again, and once more timidly drew apart the curtains of
the outer box. Nobody noticed him. Alicia still sat there with her back
toward him, transfixed by the fairy magic of the opera. Her emotions
seemed almost to transpire through the white skin of her back and
shoulders. Enrique Darles once more began to tremble. His ideas grew
fantastic. When he had seen the young woman's eyes, they had appeared
two emeralds; and now the emeralds twinkling beneath the blaze of her
hair seemed to be looking at him like two pupils. But this absurdity
soon faded from his mind. The orchestra was languorously beginning a
_ritornelle_; and all through the main motif independent musical phrases
were strung like beads. These slid into chromatics, rising, beating up
to lose themselves in one vast chord of agony supreme. And, in that huge
lamentation, there mingled depths of disillusion, whispers of hope,
desires and wearinesses, laughter and grimaces--the whole of life,
indeed, seemed blent there, swift-passing, tragic, knotted in the
bitterness of everything that ever has been and that still must be.

Enrique sat down again. Nameless suffering clutched his throat, so that
he felt a profound desire for tears. Like a motion-picture film, both
past and present flashed across his vision in swift flight. His poor,
old father and the little chemist's shop at home appeared before
him--the miserable shop that hardly eked out a penurious living for the
old man. Then he saw himself, as soon as his studies should be finished,
condemned to go back to that hateful, monotonous little town. There he
would labor to pay back his parents everything they had given him; and
there all his years of youth, all his love-illusions, all his artist