Eva steals out from her father’s door, and at once the dramatic motive of the action deepens.  We have had up to now the joy and beauty of the night, the aroma of the trees, and all the warmth of Sachs’ artist’s heart as he dwells on Walther’s song of spring:  now the human element comes in and is reflected in the music.  Eva wants to know whether there is any hope for Walther or any chance of help from Sachs, and she tries to find out without fully disclosing the secret of her love.  Her wistful longing is expressed in two perfect melodies, one new, the other shaped from a fragment of Walther’s first song; these two are gone over again and again, always varied and growing more intense in expressiveness, until Eva’s secret is no secret from the audience, though Sachs himself is supposed not to be at first quite sure about it.  When he satisfies himself the orchestra at once sings the phrase (d), and its full significance is brought out.  The real Hans Sachs, we are told, when getting on in years wooed and won quite a young girl, and the union turned out satisfactorily.  That, obviously, was too tame a matter to be set forth in a long opera—­every one would have yawned before the finish of the first Act; and, as it has been pointed out, the main change made from the original sketch of the libretto to the libretto of the actual opera lies in this:  that Wagner created a soul for his Sachs.  Sachs loves Eva, too, with a blending of benevolent fatherly affection and sexual love; but for the haphazard appearance of Walther he would certainly have gained her for his wife; for she would have infinitely preferred him to Beckmesser, a pedant, a bad artist, and, to speak colloquially, a mean and disastrous cad.  In the trial scene he has already half divined Walther’s object, and the theme (d) in its application hints not only at his longing to grasp “the new” in Walther’s song, but also his longing to possess Eva, with a sting of bitterness as he resolves to renounce her in favour of the younger suitor.  Towards the end of the opera, when Sachs brings the young pair together he says (to music quoted from Tristan) he would not play the part of King Mark and thus invite his Isolda to find a Tristan.  I ask the reader to compare this phrase with one form of the first love-theme in Tristan (g).  The essential notes are the same; but as a melody is made to sound another and different thing by varying the harmonies, there is in the Sachs phrase a touch of sadness, nearly hopelessness, but no hint of it in the Tristan form.  The true meaning is not obvious when it first occurs:  Sachs seems simply to be the appreciator of true art and to be standing up for the true artist Walther against the barren pedant Beckmesser.