ger's day, the first shadow is an eclipse, the first false note is
disaster, the first breakdown is often a heart-rending failure that
brings real tears to the eyes of younger comrades. The exquisite voice
does not grow weak and pathetic and ethereal by degrees, so that we
still love to hear it, even to the end; far more often it is suddenly
flat or sharp by a quarter of a tone throughout whole acts, or it
breaks on one note in a discordant shriek that is the end. Down goes
the curtain then, in the middle of the great opera, and down goes the
great singer for ever into tears and silence. Some of us have seen
that happen, many have heard of it; few can think without real
sympathy of such mortal suffering and distress.

Margaret realised all this, without any illusion, but there was
another side to the question. There was success, glorious and
far-reaching, and beyond her brightest dreams; there was the certainty
that she was amongst the very first, for the deafening ring of
universal applause was in her ears; and, above all, there was youth.
Sometimes it seemed to her that she had almost too much, and that some
dreadful thing must happen to her; yet if there were moments when she
faintly regretted the calmer, sweeter life she might have led, she
knew that she would have given that life up, over and over again, for
the splendid joy of holding thousands spellbound while she sang. She
had the real lyric artist's temperament, for that breathless silence
of the many while her voice rang out alone, and trilled and died away
to a delicate musical echo, was more to her than the roar of applause
that could be heard through the walls and closed doors in the street
outside. To such a moment as that Faustus himself would have cried
'Stay!' though the price of satisfied desire were his soul. And there
had been many such moments in Cordova's life. They satisfied something
much deeper than greedy vanity and stronger than hungry ambition. Call
it what you will, according to the worth you set on such art, it is
a longing which only artists feel, and to which only something in
themselves can answer. To listen to perfect music is a feast for gods,
but to be the living instrument beyond compare is to be a god oneself.
Of our five senses, sight calls up visions, divine as well as earthly,
but hearing alone can link body, mind, and soul with higher things, by
the word and by the word made song. The mere memory of hearing when it
is lost is st