Page:By order of the Czar.djvu/116

104 "In the meantime," said Dick, smiling, "we must find that woman who combines the beauties and terrors of the tiger and the gazelle."

"Ah, if we only could!" exclaimed Philip.

"If we only could," said Dick: "is she then only a dream?"

"In my sketch, yes; but at the opera she was flesh and blood."

"And did you not try to find out who she is?"

"Yes."

"On the night?"

"Yes."

"And since?"

"Yes: she has vanished without leaving a trace."

"How do you know that she has disappeared so completely?"

"I will tell you."

" was the opera of Carmen, said Philip: "a favorite opera of mine, because it seems to me to be a consistent and possible story, the music and words deftly wedded, the chorus people coming in naturally, as part of the story and not merely to sing. Indeed, it is the only opera in which one's imagination does not seem to be especially or remarkably handicapped, when at a tragic moment the hero begins to sing, and when the heroine, being stabbed to the heart, or dying of poison, does not also burst out into a wonderful effort of vocalization."

"Oh, you demand realism in opera, do you? And yet I hear you prefer a light melodramatic work, such as Carmen, to the great Wagnerian dramas."