, it can't be acquired; lots of
beautiful voices haven't a vestige of it. It's almost like another
gift--the rarest of all. The voice simply is the mind and is the heart.
It can't go wrong in interpretation, because it has in it the thing that
makes all interpretation. That's why you feel so sure of her. After
you've listened to her for an hour or so, you aren't afraid of anything.
All the little dreads you have with other artists vanish. You lean back
and you say to yourself, 'No, THAT voice will never betray.' TREULICH
GEFUHRT, TREULICH BEWACHT."

Archie looked envyingly at Fred's excited, triumphant face. How
satisfactory it must be, he thought, to really know what she was doing
and not to have to take it on hearsay. He took up his glass with a sigh.
"I seem to need a good deal of cooling off to-night. I'd just as lief
forget the Reform Party for once.

"Yes, Fred," he went on seriously; "I thought it sounded very beautiful,
and I thought she was very beautiful, too. I never imagined she could be
as beautiful as that."

"Wasn't she? Every attitude a picture, and always the right kind of
picture, full of that legendary, supernatural thing she gets into it. I
never heard the prayer sung like that before. That look that came in her
eyes; it went right out through the back of the roof. Of course, you get
an ELSA who can look through walls like that, and visions and
Grail-knights happen naturally. She becomes an abbess, that girl, after
LOHENGRIN leaves her. She's made to live with ideas and enthusiasms, not
with a husband." Fred folded his arms, leaned back in his chair, and
began to sing softly:--

"Ein Ritter nahte da."

"Doesn't she die, then, at the end?" the doctor asked guardedly.

Fred smiled, reaching under the table. "Some ELSAS do; she didn't. She
left me with the distinct impression that she was just beginning. Now,
doctor, here's a cold one." He twirled a napkin smoothly about the green
glass, the cork gave and slipped out with a soft explosion. "And now we
must have another toast. It's up to you, this time."

The doctor watched the agitation in his glass. "The same," he said
without lifting his eyes. "That's good enough. I can't raise you."

Fred leaned forward, and looked sharply into his face. "That's the
point; how COULD you raise me? Once again!"

"Once again, and always the same!" The doctor put down his glass. "This
doesn't seem to produce any symptoms in me to-night." He lit a cigar.
"S