“I will let you know.”
As Jeanne left the room, she found herself walking in a daze.
“And to think!” she whispered to herself, “that this little old lady and her lost cameo should so soon begin to fit into the marvelous pattern of my life.”
She had wonderful dreams, had this little French girl. She would see the magic curtain once more. With her on this occasion should be Marjory Dean, the great opera star, and her friend Angelo who wrote operas. When the magic curtain had been seen, an opera should be written around it, an Oriental opera full of mystery; a very short opera to be sure but an opera all the same.
“And perhaps!” Her feet sped away in a wild fling. “Perhaps I shall have a tiny part in that opera; a very tiny part indeed.”
CHAPTER XVIII
THEY THAT PASS IN THE NIGHT
The opera presented that night was Wagner’s Die Valkyre. To Petite Jeanne, the blithesome child of sunshine and song, it seemed a trifle heavy. For all this she was fascinated by the picture of life as it might have been lived long before man began writing his own history. And never before had she listened to such singing.
It was in the last great scene that a fresh hope for the future was borne in upon her. In the opera, Brunhilde having, contrary to the wishes of the gods, interceded for her lover Sigmund, she must be punished. She pleads her own cause in vain. At last she asks for a special punishment: that she be allowed to sleep encircled by fire until a hero of her people is found strong enough to rescue her.
Her wish is granted. Gently the god raises her and kisses her brow. Slowly she sinks upon the rock while tongues of flame leap from the rocks. Moment by moment the flames leap higher until the heroine is lost from sight.
It was at the very moment when the fires burned fiercest, the orchestra played its most amazing strains, that a great thought came to Jeanne.