as an
impressive and dignified moment, and Michael heard Falbe say to himself:
"Kaiserlich! Kaiserlich!"

Then it was over. The Emperor sat down, beckoned to two of his officers,
who had stood in a group far at the back of the box, to join him, and
with one on each side he looked about the house and chatted to them. He
had taken out his opera-glass, which he adjusted, using his right hand
only, and looked this way and that, as if, incognito again, he was
looking for friends in the house. Once Michael thought that he looked
rather long and fixedly in his direction, and then, putting down his
glass, he said something to one of the officers, this time clearly
pointing towards Michael. Then he gave some signal, just raising his
hand towards the orchestra, and immediately the lights were put down,
the whole house plunged in darkness, except where the lamps in the sunk
orchestra faintly illuminated the base of the curtain, and the first
longing, unsatisfied notes of the prelude began.

The next hour passed for Michael in one unbroken mood of absorption. The
supreme moment of knowing the music intimately and of never having seen
the opera before was his, and all that he had dreamed of or imagined
as to the possibilities of music was flooded and drowned in the thing
itself. You could not say that it was more gigantic than The Ring, more
human than the Meistersingers, more emotional than Parsifal, but it
was utterly and wholly different to anything else he had ever seen or
conjectured. Falbe, he himself, the thronged and silent theatre, the
Emperor, Munich, Germany, were all blotted out of his consciousness.
He just watched, as if discarnate, the unrolling of the decrees of Fate
which were to bring so simple and overpowering a tragedy on the two who
drained the love-potion together. And at the end he fell back in his
seat, feeling thrilled and tired, exhilarated and exhausted.

"Oh, Hermann," he said, "what years I've wasted!"

Falbe laughed.

"You've wasted more than you know yet," he said. "Hallo!"

A very resplendent officer had come clanking down the gangway next them.
He put his heels together and bowed.

"Lord Comber, I think?" he said in excellent English.

Michael roused himself.

"Yes?" he said.

"His Imperial Majesty has done me the honour to desire you to come and
speak to him," he said.

"Now?" said Michael.

"If you will be so good," and he stood aside for Michael to pass up the
stairs in front of hi