-case to the
pit, where the orchestra waited. A sharp tap of the baton--a glance
over his men--then the second Act began.

Kaya sat very still under the leaves with the painted branches about
her. She was perched on a swing, high aloft in the flies; and when she
looked up, she saw nothing but ropes, and machinery, and darkness; and
when she looked down, there was Mime below her, crouched by a stone;
the sun was rising, the shadows were breaking, and Siegfried lay
stretched at the foot of the Linden. He had long, light hair and fur
about his shoulders, and he was big and splendid to look at in his
youth and his wrath. He was threatening Mime, and the dwarf was
muttering and cursing. Beyond was the pit with the orchestra, the
footlights, the House.

Kaya listened, and her thoughts went back to St. Petersburg and the
class of Helmanoff. She was singing to him, and when she had finished,
he had taken her hands. "If you were not a Countess," he said, "you
could be a Lehmann in time, another Lehmann." Kaya leaned her curls
against the rope of the swing dreamily. "How long ago that seems," she
said to herself, "before--before I--"

Then she thought of the weeks since her illness, and how her voice had
come back suddenly, over night as it were, only bigger and fuller; and
how she had worked and studied, day after day, rehearsing with Ritter.

Her brow clouded a little as she remembered. He had been severe, the
Kapellmeister, caustic, even irritable. How hard he was to satisfy!
When she sang her best, he shrugged his shoulders; when she sang badly,
he was furious. Occasionally he was kind as to-day, but not
often. . . . Siegfried was alone now, carving his reed, trying to
mimic the song of the wood birds. . . . The Kapellmeister had said
nothing of Lehmann; perhaps she had lost her voice after all. Her
thoughts rambled on as she waited for her cue. . . .

Siegfried's horn was to his lips and he was blowing it; a splendid
figure, eager, expectant. . . . Kaya stretched her throat like a bird:
"If it should be barred," she said to herself, "as it was before, and
the orchestra began with the theme, and I couldn't sing!" She trembled
a little.

So the first scene passed; and the second.

The Dragon was on the stage now, and Siegfried was fighting him. The
hot breath poured from the great, red nostrils; the sword flashed. The
battle grew fiercer. . . . Kaya leaned over, stooping in the swing,
and gazin