'May I ask whether, as Miss Donne's oldest friend, you would look favourably on my proposal, supposing she were free?'

Before Mrs. Rushmore could answer, the door opened suddenly, and she could only answer by an energetic nod and a look which meant that she wished Mr. Van Torp success with all her excellent heart.

'It's quite settled!' Margaret cried as she entered. 'I've brought the director to his senses, and you are to have the rooms they were keeping for a Russian prince who has not turned up!' [{162}]

CHAPTER VI

In the sanctuary of Wagnerians the famous lyric Diva was a somewhat less important personage than in any of those other places which are called 'musical centres.' Before the glories of the great Brunhilde, or the supreme Kundry of the day, the fame of the 'nightingale soprano' paled a little, at least in the eyes of more than half the people who filled the Bayreuth theatre. But she did not pass unnoticed by any means. There were distinguished conductors of Wagner's music who led the orchestra for other operas too; there were Kundrys and Brunhildes who condescended to be Toscas sometimes, as a pure matter of business and livelihood, and there were numberless people in the audience who preferred Cavalleria Rusticana to the Meistersinger or the Götterdämmerung, but would not dare to say so till they were at a safe distance; and all these admired the celebrated Cordova, except the few that were envious of her, and who were not many. Indeed, for once it was the other way. When Margaret had come back to her own room after hearing Parsifal the first time, she had sat down and hidden her face in her hands for a few moments, asking herself what all her parts were worth in the end compared with Kundry, and what [{163}] comparison was possible between the most beautiful of Italian or French operas and that one immortal masterpiece; for she thought, and rightly perhaps, that all the rest of Wagner's work had been but a preparation for that, and that Parsifal, and Parsifal alone, had set the genius of music beside the genius of poetry, an equal, at last, upon a throne as high. On that night the sound of her own voice would have given her no pleasure, for she longed for another tone in it; if by some impossible circumstance she had been engaged to sing as Juliet that night, she would have broken down and burst into tears. She knew it, and the knowledge made her angry with herself, yet for nothing she could think of would she have foregone the second hearing of Parsifal, and the third after that; for she was a musician first, and then a great singer, and, like all true musicians, she was swayed by music that touched her, and never merely pleased by it. For her no intermediate condition of the musical sense was possible between criticism and delight; but beyond that she had found rapture now, and ever afterwards she would long to feel it again. Whether, if her voice had made it possible to sing the part of Kundry, she could have lifted herself to that seventh heaven by her own singing, only the great Kundrys and Parsifals can tell. In lyric opera she knew the keen joy of being both the instrument and the enthralled listener; perhaps a still higher state beyond that was out of any one's reach, but she could at least dream of it.

She took Van Torp with her to the performance the [{164}] next day, after impressing upon him that he was not to speak, not to whisper, not to applaud, not to make any sound, from the moment he entered the theatre till he left it for the dinner interval. He was far too happy with her to question anything she said, and he obeyed her most scrupulously. Twenty-four hours earlier she would have laughed at the idea that his presence beside her at such a time could be not only bearable, but sympathetic, yet that seemed natural now. The Diva and the ex-cowboy, the accomplished musician and the Californian miner, the sensitive, gifted, capricious woman and the iron-jawed money-wolf had found that they had something in common. Wagner's last music affected them in the same way.

Such things are not to be explained, and could not be believed if they did not happen again and again before the eyes of those who know how to see, which is quite a different thing from merely seeing. Margaret's sudden liking for the man she had once so thoroughly disliked had begun when he had whistled to her. It grew while he sat beside her in the darkened theatre. She was absorbed by the music, the action, and the scene, and at this second hearing she could follow the noble poem itself; but she was subconscious of what her neighbour felt. He was not so motionless merely because she had told him that he must sit very still; he was not so intent on what he heard and saw, merely to please her; it was not mere interest that held him, still less was it curiosity. The spell was upon him; he was entranced, and Margaret knew it. [{165}]

Even when they left the theatre and drove back to the hotel, he was silent, and she was the first to speak. Margaret hated the noise and confusion of the restaurant near the Festival Theatre.

'You have enjoyed it,' she said. 'I'm glad I brought you.'

'I've felt something I don't understand,' Van Torp answered gravely.