The huge auditorium was in twilight; with difficulty could be discerned a few isolated groups. The high-light was in the orchestral pit full of chatting men. Seidl had not yet appeared. A punctual conductor; he must have been detained this morning and the rehearsal had run on a snag. In the tepid atmosphere, Easter, her eyes greedy for the forthcoming spectacle, a novel one to her, sat with Stone. As critic of a powerful morning newspaper he had the privilege of bringing friends to any rehearsal he wished. This particular affair promised to be peculiarly interesting. Lilli Lehmann, the divine Lilli, Stone called her, Jean and Edouard de Reszke, Marie Brema, Anton Van Rooy--what a Tristan and Isolde cast, with Anton Seidl at the conductor's helm! Easter had never heard Tristan sung; she knew the vocal score, and in Washington had with beating heart listened to an orchestra under Seidl play a long Wagner programme. She became a Wagnerian in a moment. No music before this had narcotized her senses, lapped her soul into bliss, hypnotized her faculty of attention until her consciousness had swooned. Already she had battle royals daily with Madame Ash who tried to make this too strenuous pupil see that the royal road to a comprehension of Wagner was through the music of the classics: of Bach, of Beethoven, above all, of Mozart music. "My dear," admonished the wise teacher, "you will never be anything but a sloppy amateur if you begin with Wagner. Read him. That's all. Just read him, and you may realize that he knew what he was writing about when he lays stress on the old Italian school of belcanto. Those yelling hausfraus and bier-bassos--what do they know of the real Wagner melos? Rien! Nichts! Niente! Nothing! Go, if you get a chance, and hear Lilli Lehmann, even Nordica, who is a child compared to Lilli; both women know how to sing legato, both have studied the lieder of Schubert, Schumann, Brahms. Both began as coloratura singers. "What--you don't know that Lehmann has sung the Queen in Huguenots, Filina in Mignon? The fact is Esther--drop that silly nickname of Easter--you are like the majority of American girls. You know it all in advance. You want to sing Isolde before you can sing Buttercup. Listen to Jean de Reszke. No, he is more barytone than tenor--that's why I like him. Those tenors, Italian or German, they make me sick. They give me nausea with their throaty voices. Only unmusical people admire tenors. Do you know that?"