Page:Willa Cather - The Song of the Lark.djvu/406

 "Did you, in Germany that time, when you wrote me? Seven years ago, now. That must have been at the very beginning." "Yes, somewhere near the beginning. She sang one of the Rhine daughters." Fred paused and drew himself up again. "Sure, I knew it from the first note. I 'd heard a good many young voices come up out of the Rhine, but, by gracious, I had n't heard one like that!" He fumbled for another cigarette. "Mahler was conducting that night. I met him as he was leaving the house and had a word with him. 'Interesting voice you tried out this evening,' I said. He stopped and smiled. 'Miss Kronborg, you mean? Yes, very. She seems to sing for the idea. Unusual in a young singer.' I 'd never heard him admit before that a singer could have an idea. She not only had it, but she got it across. The Rhine music, that I 'd known since I was a boy, was fresh to me, vocalized for the first time. You realized that she was beginning that long story, adequately, with the end in view. Every phrase she sang was basic. She simply was the idea of the Rhine music." Ottenburg rose and stood with his back to the fire. "And at the end, where you don't see the maidens at all, the same thing again: two pretty voices and the Rhine voice." Fred snapped his fingers and dropped his hand.

The doctor looked up at him enviously. "You see, all that would be lost on me," he said modestly. "I don't know the dream nor the interpretation thereof. I 'm out of it. It 's too bad that so few of her old friends can appreciate her."

"Take a try at it," Fred encouraged him. "You 'll get in deeper than you can explain to yourself. People with no personal interest do that.

"I suppose," said Archie diffidently, "that college German, gone to seed, would n't help me out much. I used to be able to make my German patients understand me."

"Sure it would!" cried Ottenburg heartily. "Don't be