Page:Willa Cather - The Song of the Lark.djvu/431

 why you feel so sure of her. After you 've listened to her for an hour or so, you are n't afraid of anything. All the little dreads you have with other artists vanish; You lean back and you say to yourself, 'No, that voice will never betray.' Treulich geführt, treulich bewacht."

Archie looked envyingly at Fred's excited, triumphant face. How satisfactory it must be, he thought, to really know what she was doing and not to have to take it on hearsay. He took up his glass with a sigh. "I seem to need a good deal of cooling off to-night. I 'd just as lief forget the Reform Party for once. "Yes, Fred," he went on seriously; "I thought it sounded very beautiful, and I thought she was very beautiful, too. I never imagined she could be as beautiful as that."

"Was n't she? Every attitude a picture, and always the right kind of picture, full of that legendary, supernatural thing she gets into it. I never heard the prayer sung like that before. That look that came in her eyes; it went right out through the back of the roof. Of course, you get an Elsa who can look through walls like that, and visions and Grail-knights happen naturally. She becomes an abbess, that girl, after Lohengrin leaves her. She 's made to live with ideas and enthusiasms, not with a husband." Fred folded his arms, leaned back in his chair, and began to sing softly:

"Does n't she die, then, at the end?" the doctor asked guardedly.

Fred smiled, reaching under the table. "Some Elsas do; she did n't. She left me with the distinct impression that she was just beginning. Now, doctor, here 's a cold one." He twirled a napkin smoothly about the green glass, the cork gave and slipped out with a soft explosion. "And now we must have another toast. It 's up to you, this time."