“Oh!”--it was Madame A. talking, “now that is too-oo ridiculous. She must go places and he must go along as manager! Herr Spink wrote me from Hamburg that he would not have him around. She has told him that he affects her playing. Still he goes! It is too-oo much. They will not live together long.” “Where is Herr Schochman?” (This being incident number three.) “Isn’t he leading to-night? But they promised me! No, I will not play then! It is always the way. I know him well! I know why he does it! It is to annoy me. He doesn’t like me and he disappoints me.” Great business of soothing the principal performer of the evening--the manager explaining volubly, friends offering soothing comment. More talk about other artists, their wives, flirtations, successes, failures. In the midst of this, by some miscalculation (they were to have been delivered over the footlights after the end of Madame A.’s first number) in came my flowers. They looked like a fair-sized bush being introduced. “Oh!” exclaimed Madame A. when the card was examined and they were offered to her, “how heavenly. Good heavens! it is a whole tree. Oh--wonderful, wonderful! And these be-yutiful words! O-o-oh!” More coquettish glances and tender sighs. I could have choked with amusement. It was all such delicious by-play--quite the thing that artists expect and must have. She threw away the sprig of jasmine she wore and drawing out a few sprigs of the lilac wore those instead. “Now I can play,” she exclaimed. Deep breathings, sighs, ecstatic expressions. Her turn came and, as I expected after hearing her in London, I heard delicious music. She had her following. They applauded her to the echo. Her two female satellites sat with me, and little Miss Meyer of Mayence--as I will call her--fairly groaned with happiness at times. Truly Madame A. was good to look upon, quite queenly, very assured. At the end of it all a fifteen- or twenty-minute ovation. It was beautiful, truly. While we were in the green-room talking between sections of the program and intermediate soloists, I said to her, “You are coming with me to supper, of course.” “Of course! What else did you expect?” “Are there any other restaurants besides those of the Frankforter Hof?” “I think not.” “How will you get rid of your friends after the performance?” “Oh, I shall send them away. You take a table anywhere you like and I will come. Make it twelve o’clock.”