posed the overture. It is haunted by one
exquisite air, repeated, fading into variations, then rising once
more only to sink into the tender sorrow of a minor key. I have
heard it but twice in my life, but the music of it is with me to this
day. Then, as I heard it, it carried me back to the hour when Tom
and I sat expectant in this same theatre, he trembling for his play's
success, I for the sight of my love. Poor Tom! The sad melody
wailed upwards as though it were the voice of the wind playing about
his grave, every note breathing pathos or suspiring in tremulous
anguish. Poor Tom! Yet your love was happier than mine; better to
die with Claire's kiss warm upon the lips than to live with but the
memory of it.

The throbbing music had ended, and the play began. As before, the
audience were without enthusiasm at first, but to-night they knew
they had but to wait, and they did so patiently; so that when at last
Claire's voice died softly away at the close of her opening song, the
hushed house was suddenly shaken to its roof with the storm and
tumult of applause.

There she stood, serene and glowing, as one that had never known
pain. My very eyes doubted. On her face was no sign of suffering,
no trace of a tear. Was she, then, utterly without heart? In my
memory I retraced the scene of that afternoon, and all my reason
acquitted her. Yet, as she stood there in her glorious epiphany,
illumined with the blazing lights, and radiant in the joy and
freshness of youth, I could have doubted whether, after all, Clarissa
Lambert and Claire Luttrell were one and the same.

There was one thing which I did not fail, however, to note as
strange. She did not once glance in the direction of my box, but
kept her eyes steadily averted. And it then suddenly dawned upon me
that she must be playing with a purpose; but what that purpose was I
could not guess.

Whatever it was, she was acting magnificently and had for the present
completely surrendered herself to her art. Grand as that art had
been on the first night of "Francesca," the power of that performance
was utterly eclipsed to-night. Once between the acts I heard two
voices in the passage outside my box--

"What do you think of it?" said the first.

"What can I?" answered the other. "And how can I tell you? It is
altogether above words."

He was right. It was not so much admiration as awe and worship that
held the house that night. I have heard a man say