She smiled faintly, giving me her finger-tips, and then she suddenly took a step forward as if the better to examine my face.  Her strange eyes met mine.  She gave a little indefinable unnecessary “Ah!” and sank down into a chair, loosing my hand swiftly.  I was going to say that she loosed my hand as if it had been the tail of a snake that she had picked up in mistake for something else.  But that would leave the impression that her gesture was melodramatic, which it was not.  Only there was in her demeanor a touch of the bizarre, ever so slight; yes, so slight that I could not be sure that I had not imagined it.

“The wife’s a bit overwrought,” Sullivan murmured in my ear.  “Nerves, you know.  Women are like that.  Wait till you’re married.  Take no notice.  She’ll be all right soon.”

I nodded and sat down.  In a moment the music had resumed its sway over me.

I shall never forget my first sight of Rosetta Rosa as, robed with the modesty which the character of Elsa demands, she appeared on the stage to answer the accusation of Ortrud.  For some moments she hesitated in the background, and then timidly, yet with what grandeur of mien, advanced towards the king.  I knew then, as I know now, that hers was a loveliness of that imperious, absolute, dazzling kind which banishes from the hearts of men all moral conceptions, all considerations of right and wrong, and leaves therein nothing but worship and desire.  Her acting, as she replied by gesture to the question of the king, was perfect in its realization of the simplicity of Elsa.  Nevertheless I, at any rate, as I searched her features through the lorgnon that Mrs. Sullivan had silently handed to me, could descry beneath the actress the girl—­the spoilt and splendid child of Good Fortune, who in the very spring of youth had tasted the joy of sovereign power, that unique and terrible dominion over mankind which belongs to beauty alone.

Such a face as hers once seen is engraved eternally on the memory of its generation.  And yet when, in a mood of lyrical and rapt ecstasy, she began her opening song, “In Lichter Waffen Scheine,” her face was upon the instant forgotten.  She became a Voice—­pure, miraculous, all-compelling; and the listeners seemed to hold breath while the matchless melody wove round them its persuasive spell.

* * * * *

The first act was over, and Rosetta Rosa stood at the footlights bowing before the rolling and thunderous storms of applause, her hand in the hand of Alresca, the Lohengrin.  That I have not till this moment mentioned Alresca, and that I mention him now merely as the man who happened to hold Rosa’s hand, shows with what absolute sovereignty Rosa had dominated the scene.  For as Rosa was among sopranos, so was Alresca among tenors—­the undisputed star.  Without other aid Alresca could fill the opera-house; did he not receive two hundred and fifty pounds a night?  To put him in the same cast as Rosa was one of Cyril Smart’s lavish freaks of expense.