And Keller would close his eyes, imagining that he could still hear in the silence, the faint but commanding voice of the Master.  Oh, where was he now?  On some star, doubtless, eagerly following the infinite song of the spheres, a divine music that only his ears had been attuned to hear!  And to choke his emotion, the musician would sit down at the piano, while Leonora, responsive to his mood, would approach him, and standing as rigid as a statue, with her hands lost in the musician’s head of rough tangled hair, sing a fragment from the immortal Tetralogy.

Worship of Wagner transformed the butterfly into a new woman.  Leonora adored Keller as a ray of light gone astray from the glowing star now extinguished forever; she felt the joy of humbleness, the sweetness of sacrifice, seeing in him not the man, but the chosen representative of the Divinity.  Leonora could have grovelled at Keller’s feet, let him trample on her—­make a carpet of her beauty.  She willed to become a slave to that lover who was the repository of the Master’s thoughts; and who seemed to be magnified to gigantic proportions by the custody of such a treasure.

She tended him with the exquisite watchfulness of an enamored servant, following him, on his trips in the summer, the season of the great concerts, to Leipzig, Geneva, Paris; and she, the most famous living prima donna, would stay behind the scenes, with no jealousy for the applause she heard, waiting for Hans, perspiring and tired, to drop the baton amid the acclamations of the audience and come back-stage to have her dry his forehead with an almost filial caress.

And thus they traveled about Europe, spreading the light of the Master; Leonora, voluntarily in the background, like a patrician of old, dressed as a slave and following the Apostle in the name of the New Word.

The German musician let himself be adored, receiving all her caresses of enthusiasm and love with the absent-mindedness of an artist so preoccupied with sounds that at last he comes to hate words.  He taught his language to Leonora that she might some day realize a dream of hers and sing in Bayreuth; and he grounded her in the principles that had guided the Master in the creation of his great characters.  And so, when Leonora made her appearance on the stage one winter with the winged helmet and the lance of the Valkyrie, she attained an eminence in Wagnerian interpretation that was to follow her for the remainder of her career.  Hans himself was carried away by her power, and could never recover from his astonishment at Leonora’s complete assimilation of the spirit of the Master.

“If only He could hear you!” he would say with conviction.  “I am sure He would be content.”

And the pair traveled about the world together.  Every springtime she, as spectator, would watch him directing Wagnerian choruses in the “Mystic Abyss” at Bayreuth.  Winters it was he who went into ecstasies under her tremendous “Hojotoho!”—­the fierce cry of a Valkyrie afraid of the austere father Wotan; or at sight of her awakening among the flames for the spirited Siegfried, the hero who feared nothing in the world, but trembled at the first glance of love!