were not just the reading she liked,
with a gentleman looking over her shoulder; and instantly sat back,
leaving the rest to their studies, and read not another word that
night. She kept still, waiting for the music,--and then the music
began.

You who see such places only with all the conjuring power of light and
dress upon them, have no idea how they look when things are transformed
back again, and Cinderella has lost her glass slippers, and the coach
is a pumpkin, and the coachman is a rat. This night the actors came on
the stage in more--or less--than ordinary dress; as men look when they
have put on their dowdiest, for bad weather or dirty work: and these
men wore their hats. Only the young Prima Donna was bare-headed, and
of course (being a woman) had not made herself a fright. "Can a maid
forget her ornaments?" And this just touched off the effect of all the
rest. But the music!--

The many discords and melodies of life since then have at last confused
in Miriam's recollection the sounds she listened to that night; but for
years liter she could hear them almost as distinctly as at first; and
the _picture_ has never faded. The slim, fair girl; the rough,
unwashed, unkempt-looking men; men whom (had she been _your_ sister)
you would not have let touch her--as we say--"with a pair of tongs."

The play went on. Perhaps the libretto had given an uneasy stir to
Miriam's satisfaction, for as she sat now entranced with the music,
suddenly there came to her the astounding revelation that this young
girl on the stage, was singing those very words which the other young
girl in the boxes had not quite liked to read. Singing them at the top
of her sweet voice,--trying to bring them out distinctly and with full
effect. It was only a queen, to be sure; but somehow (missing the
royal robes) Miriam could see only a woman. Close upon this came
another shock. These dingy, untidy, soiled-looking men were now making
love to the young Prima Donna,--first one and then another; this one in
bass, and that one in baritone, and she answering in her clear soprano.
Answering,--sometimes _responding_. Then they touched her, and handled
her, and drew her about, as the exigencies of the piece demanded. And
there was no glitter of dress to turn the one into a kingly suitor and
the other into a faithful knight; the tarnished men were but men; and
she--poor little uncrowned princess--was but a woman among them all;
rubbing off th