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 circumstances are often in conflict. Later, I discovered that every unsuccessful singer believes, and asserts, that Geraldine Farrar is instrumental in preventing her from singing at the Metropolitan Opéra House. On this day, I say, I was unaware of this peculiarity in vocalists but I was interested in the name she had let slip, a name I had never before heard.

Who is Garden? I asked.

You don't know Mary Garden! exclaimed Martha.

There! shrieked Clara. There! I told you so. No one outside of Paris has ever even heard of the woman.

Well, they've heard of her here, said Martha, quietly, pinching a little worm of cobalt blue from a tube. She's the favourite singer of the Opéra-Comique. She is an American and she sings Louise and Manon and Traviata and Mélisande and Aphrodite, especially Aphrodite.

She's singing Aphrodite tonight, said Miss Barnes.

And what is she like? I queried.

Well, Clara began dubiously, she is said to be like Sybil Sanderson but, of course, Sanderson had a voice and, she hurried on, you know even Sanderson never had any success in New York.

I recalled, only too readily, how Manon with Jean de Reszke, Pol Plançon, and Sybil Sanderson in the cast had failed in the nineties at the Metro-