"If people don't care sufficiently for art to dine half-an-hour earlier, they had better stay away." "But you see, Miss Innes, you're not in the first act; there are the other artistes to consider. The 'Venusberg' will be sung to empty benches if you insist." It seemed for a moment as if Mr. Hermann Goetze was going to have his way; and Ulick, while praying that she might remain firm, recognised how adroitly Hermann Goetze had contrived to place her in a false position regarding her fellow artistes. "I am quite willing to throw up the part; I can only sing the opera as it is written." The conductor suggested a less decisive cut to Evelyn, and Mr. Hermann Goetze walked up and down the stage, overtaken by toothache. His agony was so complete that Evelyn's harshness yielded. She went to him, and, her hand laid commiseratingly on his arm, she begged him to go at once to the dentist. Then some of the musicians said that they could hardly read the music, so effectually had they scratched it out. "If the musicians cannot play the music, we had better go home," said Evelyn. "But the opera is announced for to-morrow night," Mr. Hermann Goetze replied dolefully. Mr. Wheeler suggested that they might go on with the rehearsal; the cut could be discussed afterwards. Groups formed, everyone had a different opinion. At last the conductor took up his stick and cried, "Number 105, please." "They are going back," thought Ulick; "she held her ground capitally. She has more strength of character than I thought. But Hermann Goetze has upset her; she won't be able to sing." And it was as he expected; she could not recapture her lost inspiration; mood, Ulick could see, was the foundation and the keystone of her art. "No," she said, "I sang it horribly, I am all out of sorts, I don't feel what I am singing, and when the mood is not upon me, I am atrocious. What annoyed me was his attributing such selfishness to me, and such vulgar selfishness, too--" "However, you had your way about the cut." "Yes, they'll have to sing the whole of the finale. But I am sorry about his tooth; I know that it is dreadful pain." Ulick told an amusing story how he had once called on Hermann Goetze to ask if he had read the book of his opera. "He'd just gone into an adjoining room to fetch a clothes-brush--he had taken off his coat to brush it--but the moment he saw me, he whipped out his handkerchief and said that he must go to the dentist." "And when I asked him to engage Helbrun to sing Brangäne, and give her eighty pounds a week if she wouldn't sing it for less, he whipped out his handkerchief as you say, and asked me if I knew a dentist." "The idea of Wagner without cuts always brings on a violent attack," and Ulick imitated so well the expression of agony that had come into the manager's face that Evelyn exploded with laughter. She begged Ulick to desist.