eks before it had seemed to her that she had slept
neither day nor night, so intense had been her nervousness and dread.
Suppose she should make a ghastly failure of her songs; suppose as she
stepped out on the stage, facing an audience largely composed of German
critics and musicians,--that one of her old attacks of shyness should
seize her? Her own disgrace she might be able to bear, but not Betty's,
nor her father's, who was writing such eager, excited letters from
Woodford with the sailing of each ship to their port; and not Richard
Ashton's, who had always been her good friend. Through his kindness had
she not first been allowed to play the grand piano at the old Ashton
homestead, in those early days when her hunger for music had been almost
as strong as her hunger for love?

But after her breakfast, which Betty brought to her sitting beside her
on the bed while she ate, Esther for the time at least forgot her
fears. There was nothing more that she could do--no further thought or
study or preparation of any kind that she could give to her evening's
work. So a feeling of gentle lassitude stole over her with the
conviction that she was now in the hands of fate, and that it was
useless to struggle further.

But if Esther was spared this final nervous tension before her _debut_,
Betty Ashton experienced a double portion of it. Indeed, in after years
she often used to say that never at another time in her life had she
suffered anything like it--not even on her own wedding day when every
girl supposedly reaches the climax of excitement.

It was not because Betty had any lack of faith in her sister's talent,
for no one who had heard Esther sing in the past few months could have
doubted her ability. Even Miss Adams, who had heard most of the world's
great singers, had assured them that they need have no fear for her
future. Yet Betty knew her sister's disposition so well, knew how little
self-esteem Esther had, how little of the vanity that sometimes seems
necessary to success, and there was a harrowing possibility that she
might suddenly be made ill from stage fright. Yet of course the younger
girl recognized her own foolishness in allowing her imagination to dwell
on such remote chances. Hardly was she able to explain even to herself
the exact reasons for her feeling of stress and strain on that day which
seemed so interminably long. Of course she and Polly had made up their
difficulty long before--they had been having