eyer knew well enough that if nothing could be done within
the next two minutes there would be an awful catastrophe; but he was
helpless. No doubt the electricians were at work; in ten minutes the
damage would be repaired and the lights would be up again; but the
house would be empty then, except for the dead and the dying.

Another groan was heard, and another quickly after it. The wretched
manager yelled, stormed, stamped, entreated, and promised, but with no
effect. In the very faint red light from the doors he saw a moving
sea of black and heard it surging to his very feet. He had an old
professional's exact sense of passing time, and he knew that a full
minute had already gone by since the explosion. No one could be dead
yet, even in that press, but there were few seconds to spare, fewer
and fewer.

Then another sound was heard, a very pure strong note, high above his
own tones, a beautiful round note, that made one think of gold and
silver bells, and that filled the house instantly, like light, and
reached every ear, even through the terror that was driving the crowd
mad in the dark.

A moment more, an instant's pause, and Cordova had begun Lucia's song
again at the beginning, and her marvellous trills and staccato notes,
and trills again, trills upon trills without end, filled the vast
darkness and stopped those four thousand men and women, spellbound and
silent, and ashamed too.

It was not great music, surely; but it was sung by the greatest living
singer, singing alone in the dark, as calmly and as perfectly as if
all the orchestra had been with her, singing as no one can who feels
the least tremor of fear; and the awful tension of the dark throng
relaxed, and the breath that came was a great sigh of relief, for it
was not possible to be frightened when a fearless woman was singing so
marvellously.

Then, still in the dark, some of the musicians struck in and supported
her, and others followed, till the whole body of harmony was complete;
and just as she was at the wildest trills, at the very passage during
which the crash had come, the lights went up all at once; and there
stood Cordova in white and lace, with her eyes half shut and shaking
her outstretched hands as she always made them shake in the mad scene;
and the stage was just as it had been before the accident, except that
Schreiermeyer was standing near the singer in evening dress with a
perfectly new and shiny high hat on the back of his head,