"Well--I mean that it was not all my fault that we went away together. You know that I always liked your father. I was interested in his ideas; I do not want him to think too badly of me. You will say something in my favour. After all, I haven't treated you badly. If I didn't marry you, it was because--" "Dearest Owen, you've been very good to me." He felt that to ask her again to go to see her father would only distress her. He said instead-- "I hear a great deal about your father's choir. It appears to be quite the fashion to hear high mass at St. Joseph's." "Father always said that Palestrina would draw all London, if properly given. Last Sunday he gave a mass by Vittoria; I longed to go. He'll never forgive me for not going to hear his choir. It is strange that we both should have succeeded--he with Palestrina, I with Wagner." "Yes, it is strange.... But you promise me that you'll go and see him as soon as you've sung Margaret--the following day." "Yes, dear, I promise you I'll do that." "You'll send him a box for the first night?" "He wouldn't sit in a box. If he went at all, it would be in some obscure place where he would not be seen." "You had better send him a box, a stall and a dress circle, then he can take his choice.... But perhaps you had better not send. His presence among the audience would only make you nervous." "No, on the contrary, his presence would make me sing." For whatever reason she had certainly sung and acted with exceptional force and genius, and Margaret was at once lifted out of the obscurity into which it was slipping and took rank with her Elizabeth and her Elsa. As they drove home together in the brougham after the performance, Owen assured her that she had infused a life and meaning into the part, and that henceforth her reading would have to be "adopted." "I wonder if father was there? He was not in the box. Did you look in the stalls?" "Yes, but he was not there. You'll go and see him to-morrow." "No, not to-morrow, dear." "Why not to-morrow?" "Because I want him to see the papers. He may not have been in the theatre; on Thursday night is Lady Ascott's ball; then on Friday--I'll go and see father on Friday. I'll try to summon courage. But there is a rehearsal of 'Tannhäuser' on Friday." And so that she might not be too tired on Friday morning, Owen insisted on her leaving the ball-room at two o'clock, and their last words, as he left her on her doorstep, were that she would go to Dulwich before she went to rehearsal. But in the warmth of her bed, not occupied long enough to restore to the body the strength of which a ball-room had robbed it, her resolution waned, and her brain, weak from insufficient sleep, shrank from the prospect of a long drive and a face of stone at the end of it. She sat moodily sipping her chocolate and _brioche_. "You were at the opera last night, Merat. Was Mademoiselle Helbrun a success?" "No, mademoiselle, I'm afraid not."