d's indomitable pluck and determined spending of money, had
impressed the American imagination. There were many who wished him well.
The Metropolitan Opera House, with the millionaires behind it, could be
trusted to take care of itself. Crayford was spending his own money, won
entirely by his own enterprise, cleverness and grit. He was a man. Men
instinctively wished to see him get in front. And to-night Claude stood
side by side with Crayford, his chosen comrade in the battle. Critics
and newspaper men were disposed to lift him on their shoulders if only
he gave them the chance. The current of opinion favored him. Report of
his work was good. Jaded critics, newspaper men who had seen and known
too much, longed for novelty. Crayford's prophecy was coming true.
America was turning its bright and sharp eyes toward the East. And out
of the East, said rumor, this new opera came. Surely it would bring with
it a breath of that exquisite air which prevails where the sands lift
their golden crests, the creaking rustle of palm trees, the silence of
the naked spaces where God lives without man, the chatter, the cries,
the tinkling stream voices of the oases.

Even tired men and men who had seen too much knew anticipation
to-night. Word had gone around that Crayford had brought the East to
America. People were eager to take their places upon his magic carpet.

The crowd in the lobbies increased. The corridors were thronged.

Van Brinen passed by, walking slowly, and looking about him with his
rather pathetic eyes. He saw Jacob Crayford, smartly dressed, a white
flower in his buttonhole, standing in a group of pressmen, went up to
him and gently took him by the arm.

"Hulloh, Van Brinen! Going to be kind to us to-night?"

"I hope so. Your man is a man of value."

"Heath? And if he weren't, d'you think I'd be spending my last dollar on
him? But what do you know of his music more than the others?"

And Crayford's eyes, become suddenly sharp and piercing, fixed
themselves on the critic's face.

"I heard some of it one night in his room at the St. Regis."

"Bits of the opera?"

"One bit. But there was something else that impressed me
enormously--almost terrible music."

"Oh, that was probably some of his Bible rubbish. But thank the Lord
we've got him away from all that. Hulloh, Perkins! Come here to see me
get in front?"

In box fifteen, on the ground tier, Mrs. Shiffney settled herself with
Madame Sennier, Jacques Senni