“If you will stay a year with me, I’ll make something wonderful of you.”  “Was there ever such happiness?  Can it be true?  Then I am wonderful—­perhaps the most wonderful person here.  Those women, however haughty they may look, what are they to me?  I am wonderful.  With not one would I change places, for I am going to be something wonderful.”  And the word sang sweeter in her ears than the violins in “Lohengrin.” ...  “Owen loves me.  I have the nicest lover in the world.  All this good fortune has happened to me.  Oh, to me!  If father could only know.  But Owen thinks that will be all right.  Father will forgive me when I come back the wonderful singer that I am—­that I shall be....  If anyone could hear me, they would think I was mad.  I can’t help it....  She’ll make something wonderful of me, and father will forgive me everything.  We always loved each other.  We’ve always been pals, dear dad.  Oh, how I wish he had heard Madame Savelli say, ’If you will stop with me a year, I’ll make something wonderful of you!’ I will write to him ... it will cheer him up.”

Then, seeing the poplars that lined the avenue, beautiful and tall in the evening, she thought of Owen.  He had said they were the trees of the evening.  She had not understood, and he had explained that we only see poplars in the sunset; they appear with the bats and the first stars.

“How clever he is, and he is my lover!  It is dreadfully wicked, but I wonder what Madame Savelli said to her husband about my voice.  She meant all she said; there can be no doubt about that.”

Catching sight of some passing faces, Evelyn thought how, in two little years, at this very hour, the same people would be returning from the Bois to hear her sing—­what?  Elsa?  Elizabeth?  Margaret?  She imagined herself in these parts, and sang fragments of the music as it floated into her mind.  She was impelled to extravagance.  She would have liked to stand up in her carriage and sing aloud, nothing seemed to matter, until she remembered that she must not make a fool of herself before Lady Duckle.  And that she might walk the fever out of her blood, she called to the coachman to stop, and she walked down the Champs Elysees rapidly, not pausing to take breath till she reached the Place de la Concorde; and she almost ran the rest of the way, so that she might not be late for dinner.  When she entered the hotel, she came suddenly upon Owen on the verandah.  He was sitting there engaged in conversation with an elderly woman—­a woman of about fifty, who, catching sight of her, whispered something to him.

“Evelyn....  This is Lady Duckle.”

“Sir Owen has been telling me, Miss Innes, what Madame Savelli said about your voice.  I do not know how to congratulate you.  I suppose such a thing has not happened before.”  And her small, grey eyes gazed in envious wonderment, as if seeking to understand how such extraordinary good fortune should have befallen the tall, fair girl who stood blushing and embarrassed in her happiness.  Owen drew a chair forward.