Margaret, it is sad to relate, was much less concerned about the two

men who were in love with her than is considered becoming in a woman of

heart. She confessed to herself, without excess of penitence, that she

had flirted abominably with them both, she consoled her conscience with

the reflection that they were both alive and apparently very well, and

she put all her strength, which was great, into preparing for her

début.

Men never love so energetically and persuasively as when they are

fighting every day for life, honour or fame, and are already on the

road to victory; but a woman's passion, though true and lasting, may be

momentarily quite overshadowed by the anticipation of a new hat or of a

social battle of uncertain issue. How much more, then, by the near

approach of such an event as a first appearance on the stage!

Logotheti bribed the doorkeeper at the small theatre where Margaret was

rehearsing. Whenever there was a rehearsal he was there before her,

quite out of sight in the back of a lower box, and he did not go away

until he was quite sure that she had left. He knew women well enough to

be certain that if anything could make Margaret wish to see him it

would be his own strict observance of her request not to show himself;

and in the meantime he enjoyed some moments of keen delight in watching

her and listening to her. He felt something of the selfish pleasure

which filled that King of Bavaria who had a performance of Lohengrin

given for himself alone. But the pleasure was not unmixed, nor was the

delight unclouded.

Even Schreiermeyer had given up coming to the rehearsals, for he was

now sure of Margaret's success and had passed on to other business. In

the dim stalls there appeared only the shabby relations and rather

gorgeous friends of the other members of the company. There was the

young painter who loved the leading girl of the chorus, there was the

wholesale upholsterer who admired the contralto, and a little apart

there was the middle-aged great lady who entertained a romantic and

expensive passion for the tenor. The tenor was a young Italian, who was

something between a third-rate poet and a spoilt child when he was in

love and was as cynical as Macchiavelli when he was not, which was the

case at present, at least so far as the middle-aged woman of the world

was concerned.

His friends could always tell the state of his

affections by the way he sang in Rigoletto. When he was hopelessly in

love himself, he sang 'La donna è mobile' with tears in his voice, as

if his heart were breaking; when, on the contrary, he knew that some

unhappy female was hopelessly in love with him, he sang it with a sort

of laugh that was diabolically irritating. At the present time he

seemed to be in an intermediate state, for he sometimes sang it in the

one way and sometimes in the other, to the despair of the poor foolish

lady in the stalls. The truth was that at irregular intervals he felt

that he was in love with Margaret.




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