Kate yielded herself over to the deep and happy sense of completion which this vast chamber always gave her, and while she and Marna sat there, silent, friendly, receptive, she felt her cares and frets slipping from her, and guessed that the drag of Mama’s innumerable petty responsibilities was disappearing, too.  For here was the pride of life—­the power of man expressed in architecture, and in the high entrancement of music.  The rich folds of the great curtain satisfied her, the innumerable lights enchanted her, and the loveliness of the women in their fairest gowns and their jewels added one more element to that indescribable thing, compacted of so many elements,—­all artificial, all curiously and brightly related,—­which the civilized world calls opera, and in which man rejoices with an inconsistent and more or less indefensible joy.

The lights dimmed; the curtain parted; the heights above Nagasaki were revealed.  Below lay the city in purple haze; beyond dreamed the harbor where the battleships, the merchantmen and the little fishing-boats rode.  The impossible, absurd, exquisite music-play of “Madame Butterfly” had begun.

Oh, the music that went whither it would, like wind or woman’s hopes; that lifted like the song of a bird and sank like the whisper of waves.  Vague as reverie, fitful as thought, yearning as frustrate love, it fluttered about them.

“The new music,” whispered Marna.

“Like flame leaping and dying,” responded Kate.

They did not realize the passage of time.  They passed from chamber to chamber in that gleaming house of song.

“This was the best of all to me,” breathed Marna, as Farrar’s voice took up the first notes of that incomparable song of woven hopes and fears, “Some Day He’ll Come.”  The wild cadences of the singer’s voice, inarticulate, of universal appeal, like the cry of a lost child or the bleating of a lamb on a windy hill,—­were they mere singing?  Or were they singing at all?  Yes, the new singing, where music and drama insistently meet.

The tale, heart-breaking for beauty and for pathos, neared its close.  Oh, the little heart of flame expiring at its loveliest!  Oh, the loyal feet that waited—­eager to run on love’s errands—­till dawn brought the sight of faded flowers, the suddenly bleak apartment, the unpressed couch!  Then the brave, swift flight of the spirit’s wings to other altitudes, above pain and shame!  And like love and sorrow, refined to a poignant essence, still the music brooded and cried and aspired.

What visions arose in Marna’s brain, Kate wondered, quivering with vicarious anguish.  Glancing down at her companion’s small, close-clasped hands, she thought of their almost ceaseless toil in those commonplace rooms which she called home, and for the two in it—­the ordinary man, the usual baby.  And she might have had all this brightness, this celebrity, this splendid reward for high labor!