r I croak," she said.

"The woman follows the man, and music fits to verse," cried Tracy.
"Music's the vine, verse the tree."

Emilia meditated. "Not if they grow up together," she suggested, and
broke into a smile at his rapture of amusement; which was succeeded by a
dark perplexity, worthy of the present aspect of Mr. Pericles.

"That's what has upset us," he said. "We have been trying to 'grow up
together,' like first-cousins, and nature forbids the banns. To-morrow
you shall have half a libretto. And then, really, my child, you must
adapt yourself to the words."

"I will," Emilia promised; "only, not if they're like iron to the
teeth."

"My belief is," said Tracy savagely, "that music's a fashion, and as
delusive a growth as Cobbett's potatoes, which will go back to the
deadly nightshade, just as music will go back to the tom-tom."

"What have you called out when I sang to you!" Emilia reproached him for
this irreverent nonsense.

"Oh! it was you and not the music," he returned half-cajolingly, while
he beat the tom-tom on air.

"Hark here!" cried Emilia. She recited a verse. "Doesn't that sound
dead? Now hark!" She sang the verse, and looked confidently for Tracy's
verdict at the close.

"What a girl that is!" He went about the house, raving of her to
everybody, with sundry Gallic interjections; until Mrs. Chump said:
"'Deed, sir, ye don't seem to have much idea of a woman's feelin's."

Tracy produced in a night two sketches of libretti for Emilia to choose
from--the Roman Clelia being one, and Camillus the other. Tracy praised
either impartially, and was indifferent between them, he told her.
Clelia offered the better theme for passionate song, but there was
a winning political object and rebuff to be given to Radicalism in
Camillus. "Think of Rome!" he said.

Emilia gave the vote for Camillus, beginning forthwith to hum, with
visions of a long roll of swarthy cavalry, headed by a clear-eyed young
chief, sunlight perching on his helm.

"Yes; but you don't think of the situations in Clelia, and what I can
do with her," snapped Tracy. "I see a song there that would light up all
London. Unfortunately, the sentiment's dead Radical. It wouldn't so much
matter if we were certain to do Camillus as well; because one would act
as a counterpoise to the other, you know. Well, follow your own fancy.
Camillus is strictly classical. I treat opera there as Alfieri conceived
tragedy. Clelia is modern style. Cast th