company them. Madame Stock declared that
she needed a rest, and the pair went to Carlsbad. There they stayed two
weeks. The nervous, excitable soprano could not long bide in one place.
She was tired of singing, but she grew restless for the theatre.

"Yes, yes," she cried to Hilda, in the train which bore them toward
Berlin. "Yes, the opera is crowded every night when I sing. You know
that I get flowers, enjoy triumphs enough to satisfy me. Well, I'm sick
of it all. I believe that I shall end by going mad. It may become a
monomania. I often say, Why all this feverishness, this art jargon? Why
should I burn myself up with Isolde and weep my heart out with
Sieglinde? Why go on repeating words that I do not believe in? Art! oh,
I hate the word." ...

Hilda, her eyes half closed, watched the neat German landscape unroll
itself.

Her mother grumbled until she fell asleep.

Her face was worn and drawn in the twilight, and Hilda noticed the heavy
markings about the mouth and under the eyes and the few gray hairs.

She caught herself analyzing, and stopped with a guilty feeling. Yes,
Dearest was beginning to look old. The stress and strain of Wagner was
showing. In a few years, when her voice--Hilda closed her eyes
determinedly and tried to shut out a picture. But then she was not sure,
not sure of herself.

She began thinking of Albert. His swarthy face forced itself upon her,
and her mother's image grew faint. Why did he kiss her, why? Surely it
must have been some mistake--it was dark; perhaps he mistook her. Here
her heart began beating so that it tolled like a bell in her
brain--mistook her, oh, God, for her mother! No! no! That could never
be. Had she not caught him watching her very often? But then why should
her mother have kissed him--perhaps merely a motherly interest.

Hilda sat upright and tried to discern some expression on her mother's
face. But it was too dark. The train rattled on toward Berlin....

The next day at the Hotel Bellevue there was much running to and fro.
Musical managers went upstairs smiling and came down raging; musical
managers rushed in raging and fled roaring. Madame Stock drove a hard
bargain, and, during the chaffering and gabble about dates and terms,
Hilda went out for a long walk. Unter den Linden is hardly a promenade
for privacy, but this girl was quite alone as she trod the familiar
walk, alone as if she were the last human on the pave. She did not
notice that she was being fo