ad
taken it and settled herself with the nonchalance of custom. Odd. Once
more something beat in the back of his brain. But he dismissed it
impatiently. No doubt many boxes in Europe were constructed in the same
fashion.

He had seated himself a little to the right and behind her. He saw her
lids droop and her hands move restlessly. Then, as the curtain went down
and Farrar was accepting the customary plaudits, her eyes opened and
moved over the rich and beautiful auditorium with a look of hungry
yearning. This was too much for Clavering and he demanded abruptly:

"Why do you look like that? Have you ever been here before?"

She turned to him with a smile. "What a question! . . . But opera, both
the silliest and the most exalting of the arts, is the Youth of Life, its
perpetual and final expression. And when the house is dark I always
imagine it haunted by the ghosts of dead opera singers, or of those whose
fate is sadder still. Does it never affect you in that way?"

"Can't say it does. . . . But . . . I vaguely remember--some ten years
ago a young singer with a remarkable voice sang Marguerite once on that
stage and then disappeared overnight . . . lost her voice, it was
said. . . ."

She gave a low choking laugh. "And you think I am she? Really!"

"I think nothing, but that I am here with you--and that in another moment
I shall want to sit on the floor--Oh, Lord!"

The house was a blaze of light. It looked like a vast gold and red jewel
box, built to exhibit in the fullness of their splendor the most
luxurious and extravagant women in the world. And it was filled tonight
from coifed and jewelled orchestra to highest balcony, where plainer
people with possibly jewelled souls clung like flies. Not a box was
empty. Clavering's glance swept the parterre, hoping it would be
occupied for the most part by the youngest set, less likely to be
startled by the resemblance of his guest to the girl who had sat among
their grandmothers when the opera house was new. But there were few of
the very young in the boxes. They found their entertainment where
traditions were in the making, and dismissed the opera as an old
superstition, far too long-winded and boring for enterprising young
radicals.

Against the red backgrounds he saw the austere and homely faces of women
who represented all that was oldest and best in New York Society, and
they wore their haughty bones unchastened by power. There were many