through a lamp-post and I
was laid up with a compound fracture for two months. So I didn't get to
see Thea."

Ottenburg studied the red end of his cigarette attentively. "She might
have come out to see you. I remember you covered the distance like a
streak when she wanted you."

Archie moved uneasily. "Oh, she couldn't do that. She had to get back to
Vienna to work on some new parts for this year. She sailed two days
after the New York season closed."

"Well, then she couldn't, of course." Fred smoked his cigarette close
and tossed the end into the fire. "I'm tremendously glad you're going
now. If you're stale, she'll jack you up. That's one of her specialties.
She got a rise out of me last December that lasted me all winter."

"Of course," the doctor apologized, "you know so much more about such
things. I'm afraid it will be rather wasted on me. I'm no judge of
music."

"Never mind that." The younger man pulled himself up in his chair. "She
gets it across to people who aren't judges. That's just what she does."
He relapsed into his former lassitude. "If you were stone deaf, it
wouldn't all be wasted. It's a great deal to watch her. Incidentally,
you know, she is very beautiful. Photographs give you no idea."

Dr. Archie clasped his large hands under his chin. "Oh, I'm counting on
that. I don't suppose her voice will sound natural to me. Probably I
wouldn't know it."

Ottenburg smiled. "You'll know it, if you ever knew it. It's the same
voice, only more so. You'll know it."

"Did you, in Germany that time, when you wrote me? Seven years ago, now.
That must have been at the very beginning."

"Yes, somewhere near the beginning. She sang one of the Rhine
daughters." Fred paused and drew himself up again. "Sure, I knew it from
the first note. I'd heard a good many young voices come up out of the
Rhine, but, by gracious, I hadn't heard one like that!" He fumbled for
another cigarette. "Mahler was conducting that night. I met him as he
was leaving the house and had a word with him. 'Interesting voice you
tried out this evening,' I said. He stopped and smiled. 'Miss Kronborg,
you mean? Yes, very. She seems to sing for the idea. Unusual in a young
singer.' I'd never heard him admit before that a singer could have an
idea. She not only had it, but she got it across. The Rhine music, that
I'd known since I was a boy, was fresh to me, vocalized for the first
time. You realized that she was beginning that long story, ad