“Yes, Fred,” he went on seriously; “I thought it sounded very beautiful, and I thought she was very beautiful, too. I never imagined she could be as beautiful as that.”
“Wasn’t she? Every attitude a picture, and always the right kind of picture, full of that legendary, supernatural thing she gets into it. I never heard the prayer sung like that before. That look that came in her eyes; it went right out through the back of the roof. Of course, you get an Elsa who can look through walls like that, and visions and Grail-knights happen naturally. She becomes an abbess, that girl, after Lohengrin leaves her. She’s made to live with ideas and enthusiasms, not with a husband.” Fred folded his arms, leaned back in his chair, and began to sing softly:—
“In lichter Waffen Scheine,
Ein Ritter nahte da.”
“Doesn’t she die, then, at the end?” the doctor asked guardedly.
Fred smiled, reaching under the table. “Some Elsas do; she didn’t. She left me with the distinct impression that she was just beginning. Now, doctor, here’s a cold one.” He twirled a napkin smoothly about the green glass, the cork gave and slipped out with a soft explosion. “And now we must have another toast. It’s up to you, this time.”
The doctor watched the agitation in his glass. “The same,” he said without lifting his eyes. “That’s good enough. I can’t raise you.”
Fred leaned forward, and looked sharply into his face. “That’s the point; how could you raise me? Once again!”
“Once again, and always the same!” The doctor put down his glass. “This doesn’t seem to produce any symptoms in me to-night.” He lit a cigar. “Seriously, Freddy, I wish I knew more about what she’s driving at. It makes me jealous, when you are so in it and I’m not.”
“In it?” Fred started up. “My God, haven’t you seen her this blessed night?—when she’d have kicked any other man down the elevator shaft, if I know her. Leave me something; at least what I can pay my five bucks for.”
“Seems to me you get a good deal for your five bucks,” said Archie ruefully. “And that, after all, is what she cares about,—what people get.”