tant, mysterious lands all around. Each picture seemed
to wrap him in the atmosphere of its country, and from that peaceful
salon, murmuring with the breathing of the silent orchard, he seemed to
be traveling all over the earth.

The photographs were all of the same characters--heroines of Wagner.
Leonora, a fanatic worshipper of the German genius, was ever speaking of
him in terms of intimate familiarity, as if she had known him
personally, and wished to sing no operas but his. And in her eager
desire to compass all the Master's work, she did not hesitate to
compromise her reputation for power and vigor by attempting roles of
lighter or tenderer vein.

Rafael gazed at the portraits one by one; here she seemed emaciated,
wan, as if she had just recovered from an illness; there, she was strong
and proud, as if challenging the world with her beauty.

"Oh, Rafael!" she murmured pensively. "Life isn't all gaiety. I have had
my stormy times like everybody else. I have lived centuries, it seems,
and these strips of cardboard are chapters of my life-story."

And while she surrendered to a dreamy re-living of the past, Rafael
would go into ecstasies over a picture of Brunhilde, a beautiful
photograph which he had more than once thought of stealing.

That Brunhilde was Leonora herself; the arrogant Valkyrie, the strong,
the valiant Amazon, capable of trying to beat him for the slightest
unwarranted liberty he took--and of doing it besides. Beneath the helmet
of polished steel, with its two wings of white plumes, her blond locks
fell, while a savage flash glittered in her green eyes, and her
nostrils seemed to palpitate with indomitable fierceness. A cloak fell
from her shoulders that were round, muscular, powerful. A steel coat of
mail curved outward around her magnificent bust, and her bare arms, one
holding the lance, and the other resting on a burnished shield, as
shining and luminous as a sheet of crystal, showed vigor and strength
under feminine grace of line. There she was in all her goddess-like
majesty--the Pallas of a mythology of the North, as beautiful as
heroism, as terrible as war. Rafael could understand the mad enthusiasm,
the electrified commotion of her audiences as they saw her stepping out
among the rocks of painted canvas, setting the boards a-tremble with her
lithe footsteps, rudely raising her lance and shield above the white
wings of her helmet and shouting the cry of the Valkyries--"_Hojotoho!_"
whic