the most wondrously beautiful ever seen on the stage, and her voice was
the most marvelous ever heard--it thrilled you, it made you tremble; its
grand pathos, its unutterable sadness, its marvelous sweetness; those
clear, passionate tones reached every heart, no matter how cold, how
hardened it might be--one felt that in listening to it that it was the
voice of a grand, passionate soul. It was full, too, of a kind of
electricity; when Madame Vanira sung she could sway the minds and hearts
of her hearers as the winter winds sway the strong boughs. She drew all
hearts to herself and opened them. When she sung, it was as though she
sung the secret of each heart to its owner.

They said that her soul was of fire and that the fire caught her
listeners; she had power, genius, dramatic force enough in her to
electrify a whole theater full of people, to lift them out of the
commonplace, to take them with her into the fairyland of romance and
genius, to make them forget everything and anything except herself.

Such a woman comes once in a century, not oftener. They called her a
siren, a Circe. She was a woman with a passionate soul full of poetry; a
genius with a soul full of power; a woman made to attract souls as the
magnet attracts the needle.

She made her _debut_ in the theater of San Carlo, in Naples, and the
people had gone wild over her; they serenaded her through the long
starlit night; they cried out her name with every epithet of praise that
could be lavished on her; they raved about her beautiful eyes, her
glorious face, her voice, her acting, her attitudes.

Then a royal request took her to Russia; a still warmer welcome met her
there; royal hands crowned her with diamonds, royal voices swelled her
triumph; there was no one like La Vanira. She was invited to court and
all honors were lavished on her.

From there she went to Vienna, where her success was as great; to Paris,
where it was greater, and now she was to make her _debut_ before the
most critical, calm, appreciative audience in Europe. The papers for
weeks had been full of her; they could describe her grand, queenly
beauty, her wonderful acting, her genius, which was alone in the world,
her jewels, her dresses, her attitudes; but there was nothing to say
about her life.

Even the society journals, usually so well informed, had nothing to say
about Madame Vanira. Whether she were single, or married, or a widow,
none of them knew; of what town, of what n