The words electrified Walther to the edge of his seat. Here were the first naturally spoken words of the opera, the words of Gilda as she expressed joy at learning the name of her lover. Walther's mother had sung the haunting words on many an evening as he drifted off to sleep in his nursery. But he had never heard them phrased so beautifully as they came now from the lips of Maria Piavi. After the numbing shock of the first scene, they started the blood throbbing in his temples again. But they were the last words he understood of the aria. Using the archaic phrase with superb showmanship to startle her audience, Maria swung with flawless technique into a contraction of verse and music that somehow managed to convey the beauty of both in the few seconds that she held the center of the stage. It was like passing a star just before you entered hyperspace. You saw it for an instant, it awed and choked you with its wonder, and then it vanished into a nothingness that was deeper than night. There was so much beauty in the fragment that Walther ached to hear the rest of the aria. But Gilda had been abducted to the Duke's palace, and the stage had revolved far into Act II before Walther could assimilate the realization that no more of "Caro Nome" would be heard this evening, or any evening. Nothing mattered after this, not even the Duke's half-minute condensation of "_La donna e mobile_". The stage picked up momentum, thunder and lightning flashed, the murdered Gilda's body was discovered by her father in the sack beside the river, the final curtain swooped down over the grisly horror, the orchestra disappeared, lights flashed on and Walther found himself being hurried along with the pleased audience toward the exit, where servo-robots were passing out handbills and pointing to a theatre across the street. The entire opera had lasted eleven minutes. * * * * * Stunned, his dream crumbling, Walther stood outside the opera house and watched the crowd disappear into the theatre across the street, or plunge into passing monorail cars. The wind of the late afternoon was gone. A light snow was falling; it melted on his cheeks and powdered the fur collar of his greatcoat. Some of the younger couples didn't immediately board the monorail. They walked around to the stage exit and waited, laughing and chattering. Walther joined them. In a few moments members of the cast began to appear. They waved gaily at friends in the crowd. Maria came out in the company of two young men, followed closely by the peppery, bright-eyed little man whom Walther recognized from the lobby poster as being Willy Fritsh, the producer. The young couples closed around them, applauding. Walther shouldered his way toward the center of the group.