Just when the music wailed the loudest, she suddenly started: some one in a seat in front of her turned round,--a handsome Southern type of man, with sharply-cut features, short hair, and a pointed beard; in the gray twilight she encountered his glance, a strange searching look fixed upon her face, affecting her as did Wagner's music. At the same time a tall, fair woman at his side also turned her head. "Voyons, qu'est-ce qu'il y a?" she asked, discontentedly. "Ce n'est rien; une ressemblance qui me frappe," he replied, in the weary tone of annoyance often to be observed in men who are under the domination of jealous women.
A couple of young Italian musicians blinding their eyes in the darkness by the study of an open score exclaimed, angrily, "Hush!" and the stranger riveted his eyes upon the stage, where the curtain was just rolling up.
Erika shivered slightly: some secret chord of her soul--a chord of which she had hitherto been unaware--vibrated. Where had she seen those dark, searching eyes before?
The musical drama pursued its course, and at first it seemed as if the enthusiasm produced in Erika's mind by the prelude was destined to fade utterly: the painted scenes were too much like other painted scenes; she had heard them extolled too highly not to be disappointed in them; the music, to her ignorant ears, was confused, inconsequent, a tangle of shrill involved discords, in the midst of which there were now and then musical phrases of noble and poetic beauty.
The effect was not to be compared with the impression produced upon the girl by the prelude,--when suddenly she seemed to hear as from another world a voice calling her, arousing her,--something unearthly, mystical, interrupted by the same shuddering, alluring wail of anguish, and when the nerves, strung to the last degree of tension, seemed on the point of giving way, there came rippling from above like cooling dew upon sun-parched flowers with promise of redemption the mystic purity of the boy-chorus,--
"Made wise by pity,
The pure in heart----"
"No one shall ever induce me to come again. I am fairly consumed with nervous fever. No one has a right under the pretence of art to stretch his fellow-creatures thus on the rack! Parsifal is altogether too fat. Wagner should have cut his Parsifal out of Donatello," exclaims Countess Lenzdorff, as she leaves the theatre at the close of the first act.
"I don't quite understand the plot," Lord Langley confesses. "The leading idea seems to me unpractical. I must say I feel rather confused." He then speaks of Kundry as 'a very unpleasant young woman,' and asks Erika if she does not agree with him; but Erika shrugs her shoulders and makes no reply.
"She is very ungracious to-day," his lordship remarks, with a rather embarrassed laugh. "Shall I take offence, Countess?" (This to the Countess Anna.) "No, she is too beautiful ever to give offence. Only look! She is creating quite a sensation.--Every one is staring after you, Erika."
The theatre is empty. The audience is streaming across the grass towards the restaurant to refresh itself.