the curtain went up, she became the mediaeval German
princess; her other life fell behind her, and her father was but a
little shadow on her brain. Yet he was the inspiration of her acting,
and that night the whole theatre consisted for Evelyn of one stage-box.
Her eyes never wandered there, but she knew that there sat her ultimate
judge, one whom no excess or trick could deceive. He would not judge her
by the mere superficial appearance she presented on the stage, by the
superficial qualities of her voice or her acting; he would see to the
origin of the idea, whence it had sprung, and how it had been developed.
He did not know this particular opera, but he knew all music, and would
judge it and her not according to the capricious taste of the moment,
but in its relation and her relation to the immutable canons of art,
from the plain chant to Palestrina, from Palestrina to Bach and
Beethoven. Her singing of every phrase would be passed as it were
through the long tradition of the centuries; it would not be accepted as
an isolated fact, it would be judged good, indifferent or bad, by
learned technical comparison. That she was his daughter would weigh not
a hair's weight in the scale, and the knowledge of this terrible justice
raised her out of herself, detached her more completely from the
superficial and the vulgar. She sang and acted as in a dream,
hypnotised by her audience, her exaltation steeped in somnambulism and
steeped in ecstasy.

The curtain was raised several times, but that night the only applause
or censure she was minded to hear awaited her in her dressing-room. She
sent her maid out of the room, and waited for some sound of footsteps in
the corridor, and at the first sound she rushed to the door and flung it
open. It was her father, Merat was bringing him along the corridor, and
they stood looking at each other; her clear, nervous eyes were trembling
with emotion. His face seemed to tell her that he was pleased; she read
upon it the calm exaltation of art, yet she could not however summon
sufficient courage to ask him, and they sat down side by side. At last
she said--

"Why don't you speak? Aren't you satisfied? Was I so bad?"

"You are a great artist, Evelyn. I wish your mother were here to hear
you."

"Is that really true? Say it again, father. You are satisfied with me.
Then I have succeeded."

He told her why she had sung well, and he knew so well. It was like
walking with a man with a lantern;