s audience so ready to forgive or
admire should she take too long a time before winning their attention.

"O blessed Virgin, hear my prayer!
Thou star of glory, look on me!"

These lines were whispered in so low a tone that they were almost
inaudible except to the persons nearest the stage and Esther's voice
trembled with nervousness. Was she frightened as she had expected to be?
It was difficult to decide, because she stood so still.

"Here in the dust I bend before thee,
Now from this earth oh set me free!
Let me a maiden pure and white,
Enter into thy kingdom bright!"

Betty's tension relaxed. "Bravo," Miss Adams whispered under her breath.
Richard Ashton felt a glow which was oddly commingled of pleasure, pride
and sorrow. Yet one could not think, could not feel any other emotion
now except wonder and delight as the beautiful voice in perfect sympathy
with the music and its theme filled every shadowy space in the opera
house with harmony.

Betty witnessed the expressions on several previously bored faces near
them changing first to surprise, then interest and finally frank
pleasure. Small wonder that the old German music master had allowed this
young American girl to appear unheralded before them! She could only be
twenty-one or twenty-two years old at the most. What a future lay before
her!

Still Esther sang on:

"If vain desires and earthy longing
Have turn'd my heart from thee away,
The sinful hopes within me thronging
Before thy blessed feet I lay.
I'll wrestle with the love I cherished,
Until in death its flame hath perish'd.
If of my sin thou wilt not shrive me,
Yet in this hour, oh grant thy aid!
Till thy eternal peace thou give me,
And on thy bounty I will call,
That heav'nly grace on him may fall."

And with the closing words of her song Esther suddenly seemed to have
reached the realization of all her worst fears. Surely she had failed
abjectly, for was there not a silence everywhere about her, chilling and
cruel? Would not a single pair of hands applaud? She dared not try to
find the face of her master, for she hoped never to have to see
Professor Hecksher again so long as she lived. Yet here miraculously
enough he had appeared on the stage standing next her, with one of his
powerful hands holding tight to her cold one, bowing and smiling, while
the noise of many bravos and of almost a tumult of applause shoo