urely you haven't been expecting her to come up here? PARQUET, fourth
row from the front, between two women in plaid dresses--oh, now the
lights have gone."

"Ssh!" said at least half a dozen people about them: her voice was
audible above the growling of the thunder.

Maurice took her opera-glass, and, notwithstanding the darkness into
which the theatre had been plunged, travelled his eyes up and down the
row she named--naturally without success. When the curtains parted and
disclosed the stage, it was a little lighter, but not light enough for
him; he could not find the plaids; or rather there were only plaids in
the row; and there was also more than one head that resembled hers. To
know that she was there was enough to distract him; and he was
conscious of the music and action of the opera merely as something that
was going on outside him, until he received another sharp nudge from
Madeleine on his righthand side.

"You're not attending. And this is the only act you'll be able to make
anything of."

He gave a guilty start, and turned to the stage, where Hunding had just
entered to a pompous measure. In his endeavours to understand what
followed, he was aided by his companions, who prompted him alternately.
But Siegmund's narration seemed endless, and his thoughts wandered in
spite of himself.

"Listen to this," said Dove of a sudden. "It's one of the few songs
Wagner has written." He swayed his head from side to side, to the
opening bars of the love-song; and Maurice found the rhythm so inviting
that he began keeping time with his foot, to the indignation of a
music-loving policeman behind them, who gave an angry: "Pst!"

"One of the finest love-scenes that was ever written," whispered
Madeleine in her decisive way. And Maurice believed her. From this
point on, the music took him up and carried him with it; and when the
great doors burst open, and let in the spring night, he applauded
vigorously with the rest, keeping it up so long that Dove disappeared,
and Madeleine grew impatient.

"Let us go. The interval is none too long."

They went downstairs to the first floor of the building, and entered a
long, broad, brilliantly lighted corridor. Here the majority of the
audience was walking round and round, in a procession of twos and
threes; groups of people also stood at both ends and looked on; others
went in and out of the doors that opened on the great loggia. Madeleine
and Maurice joined the perambulating t