perial Theatre for the opera to be performed there. The
Empress-Queen and her husband were present, the frigid silence of
etiquette was broken more than once by applause, and the Abate
Metastasio wrote some lines for the Signorina; indeed, the success of
the piece was caused by the girl's singing.

"Mark is better than the canary," the Maestro was continually repeating.

In his hour of triumph the old gentleman presented a quaint and
attractive study to the observer of the by-ways of art. Amid the rococo
surroundings among which he moved, he was himself a singular example of
the power of art to extract from bizarre and unpromising material
somewhat at least of pure and lasting fruit. He had attired his withered
and lean figure in brilliant hues and the finest lace, and in this
attire he trained the girl, also fantastically dressed, to warble the
most touching and delicious plaints. The instinctive pathos of inanimate
things, of forms and colours, was perceived in sound, and much that
hitherto seemed paltry and frivolous was refined and ennobled. Mark's
death, and even that of the poor canary, was beginning to bear fruit.
Nature and love were feeling out the enigma of existence by the aid of
art.

The reference to the canary was not, indeed, made in the presence of
Tina, for the Maestro found that it was not acceptable. Nevertheless, a
strange fellowship and affection was springing up between these two. The
critics complained that the Signorina varied her notes; but, in fact,
the score of the opera never remained the same--at least as regarded her
parts. As she sang, with the Maestro beside her at the harpsichord,
imagination and recollection, instructed by the magic of sound, touched
her notes with an unconscious pathos and revealed to her master, with
his ready pencil in one hand and the other on the keys, fresh heights
and depths of cultured harmony, new combinations of fluttering,
melodious notes.

This copartnership, this action and reaction, had something wonderful
and charming about it; the power of nature in the girl's voice
suggesting possibilities of more melodious, more artistic pathos to the
composer, the girl's passionate instinct recognising the touch, and
confessing the help, of the master's skill. It seems a strange duet, yet
I do not know that we should think it strange.

The girl's nature, pure and loving, was supremely moved by the discovery
of this power of realisation and expression which it had