She smiled faintly, giving me her finger-tips, and then she suddenly
took a step forward as if the better to examine my face. Her strange
eyes met mine. She gave a little indefinable unnecessary "Ah!" and
sank down into a chair, loosing my hand swiftly. I was going to say
that she loosed my hand as if it had been the tail of a snake that she
had picked up in mistake for something else. But that would leave the
impression that her gesture was melodramatic, which it was not. Only
there was in her demeanor a touch of the bizarre, ever so slight; yes,
so slight that I could not be sure that I had not imagined it.

"The wife's a bit overwrought," Sullivan murmured in my ear. "Nerves,
you know. Women are like that. Wait till you're married. Take no
notice. She'll be all right soon."

I nodded and sat down. In a moment the music had resumed its sway over
me.

I shall never forget my first sight of Rosetta Rosa as, robed with the
modesty which the character of Elsa demands, she appeared on the stage
to answer the accusation of Ortrud. For some moments she hesitated in
the background, and then timidly, yet with what grandeur of mien,
advanced towards the king. I knew then, as I know now, that hers was a
loveliness of that imperious, absolute, dazzling kind which banishes
from the hearts of men all moral conceptions, all considerations of
right and wrong, and leaves therein nothing but worship and desire.
Her acting, as she replied by gesture to the question of the king,
was perfect in its realization of the simplicity of Elsa. Nevertheless
I, at any rate, as I searched her features through the lorgnon that
Mrs. Sullivan had silently handed to me, could descry beneath the