-gardens of Babylon. From there I had my first glimpse
of the company. They _were_ strange people. The women glittered like
Christmas-trees. When we were half-way down the stairs, the buzz of
conversation stopped so suddenly that some foolish remark I happened to
be making rang out like oratory. Every face was lifted toward us. My
host and I completed our descent and went the length of the drawing-room
through a silence which somewhat awed me. I couldn't help wishing that
one could ever get that kind of attention in a concert-hall. In the
music-room Stein insisted upon arranging things for me. I must say that
he was neither awkward nor stupid, not so wooden as most rich men who
rent singers. I was properly affable. One has, under such circumstances,
to be either gracious or pouty. Either you have to stand and sulk, like
an old-fashioned German singer who wants the piano moved about for her
like a tea-wagon, and the lights turned up and the lights turned
down,--or you have to be a trifle forced, like a debutante trying to make
good. The fixed attention of my audience affected me. I was aware of
unusual interest, of a thoroughly enlisted public. When, however, my host
at last left me, I felt the tension relax to such an extent that I
wondered whether by any chance he, and not I, was the object of so much
curiosity. But, at any rate, their cordiality pleased me so well that
after Peppo and I had finished our numbers I sang an encore or two, and
I stayed through Peppo's performance because I felt that they liked to
look at me.

"I had asked not to be presented to people, but Mrs. Stein, of course,
brought up a few friends. The throng began closing in upon me, glowing
faces bore down from every direction, and I realized that, among people
of such unscrupulous cordiality, I must look out for myself. I ran
through the drawing-room and fled up the stairway, which was thronged
with Old Testament characters. As I passed them, they all looked at me
with delighted, cherishing eyes, as if I had at last come back to my
native hamlet. At the top of the stairway a young man, who looked like a
camel with its hair parted on the side, stopped me, seized my hands and
said he must present himself, as he was such an old friend of Siegmund's
bachelor days. I said, 'Yes, how interesting!' The atmosphere was somehow
so thick and personal that I felt uncomfortable.

"When I reached my dressing-room Mrs. Stein followed me to say that I
would, of