This woman had an attractive face, sallow and hollow, with burning black eyes and rich black hair. Her body was long and thin, supple and graceful. She followed Madame A. too, with those strange, questioning eyes. Life is surely pathetic. It was interesting, though, to be in this atmosphere of intense artistic enthusiasm. When the last touch had been added to Madame’s coiffure, a sprig of blossom of some kind inserted in her corsage, a flowing opera cloak thrown about the shoulders, she was finally ready. So busy was she, suggesting this and that to one and another of her attendants, that she scarcely saw me. “Oh, there you are,” she beamed finally. “Now, I am _quite_ ready. Is the machine here, Marie? Oh, very good. And Herr Steiger! O-o-oh!” This last to a well-known violinist who had arrived. It turned out that there were two machines--one for the satellites and Herr Steiger who was also to play this evening, and one for Madame A., her maid and myself. We finally debouched from the hall and elevator and fussy lobby, where German officers were strolling to and fro, into the machines and were away. Madame A. was lost in a haze of artistic contemplation with thoughts, no doubt, as to her program and her success. “Now maybe you will like my program better,” she suggested after a while. “In London it was not so goot. I haf to feel my audience iss--how do you say?--vith me. In Berlin and here and Dresden and Leipzig they like me. In England they do not know me.” She sighed and looked out of the window. “Are you happy to be with me?” she asked naïvely. “Quite,” I replied. When we reached the auditorium we were ushered by winding passages into a very large green-room, a salon, as it were, where the various artists awaited their call to appear. It was already occupied by a half-dozen persons, or more, the friends of Madame A., the local manager, his hair brushed aloft like a cockatoo, several musicians, the violinist Herr Steiger, Godowsky the pianist, and one or two others. They all greeted Madame A. effusively. There was some conversation in French here and there, and now and then in English. The room was fairly babbling with temperament. It is always amusing to hear a group of artists talk. They are so fickle, make-believe, innocently treacherous, jealous, vainglorious, flattering. “Oh, yes--how splendid he was. That aria in C Major--perfect! But you know I did not care so much for his rendering of the Pastoral Symphony--very weak in the _allegro ma non troppo_--very. He should not attempt that. It is not in his vein--not the thing he does best”--fingers lifted very suggestively and warningly in the air. Some artist and his wife did not agree (very surprising); the gentleman was the weaker instrument in this case.