cross her mind. As though in response to her thought, the
artist's mimic cough on the stage was answered in the box by the hoarse,
terribly real cough of Insarov. Elena stole a glance at him, and at once
gave her features a calm and untroubled expression; Insarov understood
her, and he began himself to smile, and softly to hum the tune of the
song.

But he was soon quiet. Violetta's acting became steadily better,
and freer. She had thrown aside everything subsidiary, everything
superfluous, and _found herself_; a rare, a lofty delight for an artist!
She had suddenly crossed the limit, which it is impossible to define,
beyond which is the abiding place of beauty. The audience was thrilled
and astonished. The plain girl with the broken voice began to get a hold
on it, to master it. And the singer's voice even did not sound broken
now; it had gained mellowness and strength. Alfredo made his entrance;
Violetta's cry of happiness almost raised that storm in the audience
known as _fanatisme_, beside which all the applause of our northern
audiences is nothing. A brief interval passed--and again the audience
were in transports. The duet began, the best thing in the opera, in
which the composer has succeeded in expressing all the pathos of the
senseless waste of youth, the final struggle of despairing, helpless
love. Caught up and carried along by the general sympathy, with tears of
artistic delight and real suffering in her eyes, the singer let
herself be borne along on the wave of passion within her; her face
was transfigured, and in the presence of the threatening signs of fast
approaching death, the words: '_Lascia mi vivero--morir si giovane_'
(let me live--to die so young!) burst from her in such a tempest of
prayer rising to heaven, that the whole theatre shook with frenzied
applause and shouts of delight.

Elena felt cold all over. Softly her hand sought Insarov's, found it,
and clasped it tightly. He responded to its pressure; but she did not
look at him, nor he at her. Very different was the clasp of hands with
which they had greeted each other in the gondola a few hours before.

Again they glided along the Canal Grande towards their hotel. Night had
set in now, a clear, soft night. The same palaces met them, but they
seemed different. Those that were lighted up by the moon shone with
pale gold, and in this pale light all details of ornaments and lines of
windows and balconies seemed lost; they stood out more clearly