an end. The best thing I can do will
be after all to enter the contest for your hand. I might thus at
least win something for myself as a poet!... You are not listening?
Yet it was yourself put the idea in my head.... Oh, very well! I
see! Attend to your shoes! If at least," he slyly suggests, without
turning, "some one would sing to me while I work! I heard to-day a
regularly beautiful song. If just a third verse, equally successful,
might be added to it!" Like the hypnotised receiving a suggestion,
Walther, ready as a bird, breaks forth singing, his gaze never
swerving from Eva: "Did the stars come to a pause in their charming
dance? Light and clear, above the clustering locks of the most
beautiful of all women, glittered with soft brilliancy a crown of
stars..."

"Listen, child," Sachs bids Eva, in the short pause between the
verses, "that is a master-song!"

"Miracle upon miracle! A double radiance of day now illumines me,
for, even as two suns of purest delight, two divinely beautiful
eyes bend their light upon me...."

"That," says Sachs, "is the sort of thing you hear sung in my house
nowadays!"

"Oh, gracious vision which my heart found boldness to approach!
The wreath, which in the rays of the twin suns shows pale at once
and green, tenderly and mildly she weaves about the consort's head.
Into the breast of the poet--born erst to joy, now elect to
glory,--Paradisal joy she pours, in Love's dream!"

Sachs has been enabled to keep in hand his emotion at the sound
of the ecstatic song by diligently busying himself with the shoe,
uttering at intervals small insignificant remarks: "Let us see,
now, whether I have got my shoe aright. I believe I have finally
succeeded, eh? Try it, now!" He has slipped it on to her foot,
"Walk on it! Tell me, does it still hurt?" But Eva, who has stood
breathlessly gazing and listening to the thrilling accents, new
to her, of her lover, when the heart-searching voice is silent
and the tension relaxes, bursts into passionate weeping, sinks on
Sachs's breast and clings to him, sobbing. Walther with a quick
stride is beside them; impulsively he grasps the hand of the good
Sachs, to whom he dimly feels he owes so much,--to whom he owes
really more than he dreams.

For a moment not one of them can speak. Then it becomes too much
for Sachs, this soft beloved form trembling against his breast;
he gently frees himself and allows the burden he relinquishes to
slide upon the shoulder