was going to be so bold as to attempt Norma, he had raised his eyebrows a little and said, “Mademoiselle will sing it according to the fashion of to-day; we cannot compare the present with the past.”  Ah! Ce vieux marquis etait tres fin.  And her father would think the same; never would he admit that she could sing like her mother.  But Ulick had said—­and no doubt he had already read Ulick’s article—­that she had rescued the opera from the grave into which it was gliding.  None of them liked it for itself.  Her father spoke indulgently about it because her mother had sung it.  Ulick praised it because he was tired of hearing Wagner praised, and she liked it because her first success had been made in it.

These morning hours, how delicious they were! to roll over in one’s silk nightgown, to feel it tighten round one’s limbs and to think how easily success had come.  Madame Savelli had taught her eight operas in ten months, and she had sung Margaret in Brussels—­a very thin performance, no doubt, but she had always been a success.  Ulick would not have thought much of her first Margaret.  Almost all the points he admired she had since added.  She had learnt the art of being herself on the stage.  That was all she had learnt, and she very much doubted if there was anything else to learn.  If Nature gives one a personality worth exhibiting, the art of acting is to get as much of one’s personality into the part as possible.  That was the A B C and the X Y Z of the art of acting.  She had always found that when she was acting herself, she was acting something that had not been acted before.  She did not compare her Margaret with her Elizabeth.  With Margaret she was back in the schoolroom.  Still she thought that Ulick was right; she had got a new thrill out of it.  Her Margaret was unpublished, but her Elizabeth was three times as real.  There was no comparison; not even in Isolde could she be more true to herself.  Her Elizabeth was a side of her life that now only existed on the stage.  Brunnhilde was her best part, for into it she poured all her joy of life, all her love of the blue sky with great white clouds floating, all her enthusiasm for life and for the hero who came to awaken her to life and to love.  In Brunnhilde and Elizabeth all the humanity she represented—­and she thought she was a fairly human person—­was on the stage.  But Elsa?  That was the one part she was dissatisfied with.  There were people who liked her Elsa.  Oh, her Elsa had been greatly praised.  Perhaps she was mistaken, but at the bottom of her heart she could not but feel that her Elsa was a failure.  The truth was that she had never understood the story.  It began beautifully, the beginning was wonderful—­the maiden whom everyone was persecuting, who would be put to death if some knight did not come to her aid.  She could sing the dream—­that she understood.  Then the silver-clad knight who comes from afar, down the winding river, past thorpe and town, to release her from those who were plotting against her.  But afterwards?  This knight who wanted to marry her, and who would not tell his name.  What did it mean?  And the celebrated duet in the nuptial chamber—­what did it mean?  It was beautiful music—­but what did it mean?  Could anyone tell her?  She had often asked, but no one had ever been able to tell her.