oved
their music-maker, more because V. E. R. D. I. meant Vittor Emanuele,
Re D'Italia, and they liked to sing his forbidden praises in the very
ears of the white-coat Austrians.

They had their Victor. Had he not sufficed? Olive knew that the
authorities scarcely countenanced the playing of the Republican hymn.
Was it because it made men long for some greater ruler than a king, or
for no ruler at all? Freedom is more elusive even than happiness.
Never yet has she yielded herself to men, though she makes large
promises and exacts sacrifices as cruel as ever those of Moloch could
have been. Her altars stream with blood, but she ... she is talking,
or she is pursuing, or she is on a journey, or peradventure she
sleepeth ... and her prophets must still call upon her and cut
themselves with knives.

As the curtain went up Olive leant forward that she might see the
stage. It was her first opera. Music is a necessity in Italy, but in
England it is a luxury, and somehow she and her mother had never been
able to afford even seats in the gallery at Covent Garden.

Now all her thoughts, all her fancies, were swept away in the flood of
charming melody. The story, when she understood it, shocked and
repelled her. It seemed strange that crime should be set to music, and
that one should have to see abduction, treachery, vice, and a murder
brutally committed in full view of the audience, while the tenor sang
the lightest of all his lyrics: "_La donna e mobile_."

Gemma asked for an ice during the second _entr'acte_, and Orazio
hurried out to get one for her at the buffet. The girl looked tired,
but she was kind to her lover in her silent, languid way, listening to
his whispered inanities, and allowing him to hold her hand, though her
flesh shrank from the damp clamminess of his grasp, and she hated his
nearness and wished him away.

The man who sat alone now in the stage box could see no flaw in her
composure, and she seemed to him as perfectly calm as she was
perfectly beautiful, though he had noticed that not once had she
looked towards the stage. She kept her eyes down, and they were
shadowed by the long black lashes. Ah, she was beautiful! The man's
lean brown face was troubled and he sighed under his breath. He went
out in the middle of the third act, and he did not come back again.

After a while Gemma moved restlessly. "Orazio, _per carita_! Your hand
is so hot and sticky! I shall change places with Carmela," she said.