he people; she had wanted
to tell them what Madame Savelli had said. She had wished to cry to
them, "In two years all you people will be going to the opera to hear
me." What had stopped her was the dread that it might not happen. But it
had happened! That was the evening she had met Olive. She could see the
exact spot. Although Olive had only just arrived, she had been up to her
room and put on a pair of slippers. They had dined at a cafe, and all
through dinner she had longed to be alone with Owen, and after dinner
the time had seemed so long. Before going up in the lift he had asked
her if he might come to her room. In a quarter of an hour, she had said,
but he had come sooner than she expected, and she remembered slipping
her arm into a gauze wrapper. How she had flung herself into his arms!
That was the moment of her life to put upon the stage when she and
Tristan look at each other after drinking the love potion.

In the second act Tristan lives through her. She is the will to live;
and if she ultimately consents to follow him into the shadowy land, it
is for love of him. But of his desire for death she understands nothing;
all through the duet it is she who desires to quench this desire with
kisses. That was her conception of women's mission, and that was her own
life with Owen; it was her love that compelled him to live down his
despondencies. So her Isolde would have an intense and a personal life
that no Isolde had had before. And in holding up her own soul to view,
she would hold up the universal soul, and people would be afraid to turn
their heads lest they should catch each other's eyes. But was not a
portrayal of sexual passion such as she intended very sinful? It could
not fail to suggest sinful thoughts.... She could not help what folk
thought--that was their affair. She had turned her back upon all such
scruples, and this last one she contemptuously picked up and tossed
aside like a briar.

Her eyes opened and she gazed sleepily into the twilight of mauve
curtains, and dreaded her maid's knock. "It must be nearly eight," she
thought, and she strove to pick up the thread of her lost thoughts. But
a sharp rap at her door awakened her, and a tall, spare figure crossed
the room. As the maid was about to draw the curtains, Evelyn cried to
her--

"Oh, wait a moment, Herat.... I'm so tired. I didn't get to bed till
two o'clock."

"Mademoiselle forgets that she told me to awaken her very early.
Mademoiselle