"My sins, father, lie between God and myself. What I come for is to beg forgiveness for the wrong I did you." He did not answer, but he seemed to acquiesce, and it was a relief to her to feel that it was not the moral question that divided them; convention had forced him to lay some stress upon it, but clearly what rankled in his heart, and prevented him from taking her in his arms, was a jealous, purely human feud. This she felt she could throw herself against and overpower. "Father, you must forgive me, we are all in all to each other; nothing can change that. Ever since mother's death--you remember when the nurse told us all was over--ever since I've felt that we were in some strange way dependent on each other. Our love for each other is the one unalterable thing. My music you taught me; the first songs I sang were at your concerts, and now that we have both succeeded--you with Palestrina, and I with Wagner--we must needs be aliens. Father, can't you see that that can never be? if you don't you do not love me as I do you. You're still thinking that I left you. Of course, it was very wrong, but has that changed anything? Father, tell me, tell me, unless you want to kill me, that you do not believe that I love you less." The wonder of the scene she was acting--she never admitted she acted; she lived through scenes, whether fictitious or real--quickened in her; it was the long-expected scene, the scene in the third act of the "Valkyrie" which she had always played while divining the true scene which she would be called upon to play one day. It seemed to her that she stood on the verge of all her future--the mystery of the abyss gathered behind her eyes; she threw herself at her father's feet, and the celebrated phrase, so plaintive, so full of intercession, broke from her lips, "Was the rebel act so full of shame that her rebellion is so shamefully scourged? Was my offence so deep in disgrace that thou dost plan so deep a disgrace for me? Was this my crime so dark with dishonour that it henceforth robs me of all honour? Oh tell me, father; look in mine eyes." She heard the swelling harmony, every chord, the note that gave her the note she was to sing. She was carried down like a drowning one into a dim world of sub-conscious being; and in this half life all that was most true in her seemed to rise like a star and shine forth, while all that was circumstantial and ephemeral seemed to fall away. She was conscious of the purification of self; she seemed to see herself white and bowed and penitent. She experienced a great happiness in becoming humble and simple again.... But she did not know if the transformation which was taking place in her was an abiding or a passing thing. She knew she was expressing all that was most deep in her nature, and yet she had acted all that she now believed to be reality on the stage many times. It seemed as true then as it did now--more true; for