“You don’t like ’Carmen’?”

Mr. Innes shrugged his shoulders contemptuously.

“‘Faust’ is better than that.  Gounod follows—­at a distance, of course—­but he follows the tradition of Haydn and Mozart.  ‘Carmen’ is merely Gounod and Wagner.  I hope you’ve not forgotten my teaching; as I’ve always said, music ended with Beethoven and began again with Wagner.”

“Did you see Ulick Dean’s article?”

“Yes, he wrote to me last night about your Elizabeth.  He says there never was anything heard like it on the stage.”

“Did he say that?  Show me the letter.  What else did he say?”

“It was only a note.  I destroyed it.  He just said what I told you.  But he’s a bit mad about that opera.  He’s been talking to me about it all the winter, saying that the character had never been acted; apparently it has been now.  Though for my part I think Brunnhilde or Isolde would suit you better.”

The mention of Isolde caused them to avoid looking at each other, and Evelyn asked her father to tell her about Ulick—­how they became acquainted and how much they saw of each other.  But to tell her when he made Ulick’s acquaintance would be to allude to the time when Evelyn left home.  So his account of their friendship was cursory and perfunctory, and he asked Evelyn suddenly if Ulick had shown her his opera.

“Grania?”

“No, not ‘Grania.’  He has not finished ‘Grania,’ but ’Connla and the Fairy Maiden.’  Written,” he added, “entirely on the old lines.  Come into the music-room and you shall see.”

He took up the lamp; Evelyn called Agnes to get another.  The lamps were placed upon the harpsichord; she lighted some candles, and, just as in old times, they lost themselves in dreams and visions.  This time it was in a faint Celtic haze; a vision of silver mist and distant mountain and mere.  It was on the heights of Uisnech that Connla heard the fairy calling him to the Plain of Pleasure, Moy Mell, where Boadag is king.  And King Cond, seeing his son about to be taken from him, summoned Coran the priest and bade him chant his spells toward the spot whence the fairy’s voice was heard.  The fairy could not resist the spell of the priest, but she threw Connla an apple and for a whole month he ate nothing but that.  But as he ate, it grew again, and always kept whole.  And all the while there grew within him a mighty yearning and longing after the maiden he had seen.  And when the last day of the month of waiting came, Connla stood by the side of the king, his father, on the Plain of Aromin, and again he saw the maiden come towards him, and again she spoke to him—­

“’Tis no lofty seat on which Connla sits among short-lived mortals awaiting fearful death, but now the folk of life, the ever-living living ones, beg and bid thee come to Moy Mell, the Plain of Pleasure, for they have learnt to know thee.”

When Cond the king observed that since the maiden came Connla his son spake to none that spake to him, then Cond of the hundred fights said to him—­