But Easter was refractory. She liked the tenor voice, and, notwithstanding the fulness and richness of her middle and lower registers, she preferred her fluty upper tones. Madame Ash was pleased with the voice and told Stone that in two years she would have the girl in the concert-room. A wonderful talent, a wonderful personality, hard as nails, and all the better for it. She would keep off the men, with that cold eye. But when she does break loose--Grand Dieu! The madame comfortably shivered. She was not averse from hearing about exciting scandals--if they didn't happen in her own vocal family. Easter was more than promising material. The kind-hearted teacher and manufacturer of prima-donnas, as she merrily christened herself, was interested in the strange girl Alfred Stone had brought to her for judgment. She also wondered at his noticeable interest, for she knew him as a celibate, a woman-hater, rather say, a despiser of the cloven sex. She had persuaded him, without much trouble, to invite Easter to a full-dress rehearsal at the Opera. The girl couldn't afford to pay for a seat. This he had done and now Easter was in the sixth heaven of anticipation. At half-past ten Frau Seidl telephoned the director that his assistant-conductor was to go ahead with the first act, which had been rehearsed by him the week before. He was ill but would be down at midday. There was some gutteral cursing, it stopped when the first enigmatic bars welled-up from the mystic abyss. Easter, her eyes closed, her face flushed, swam out on the muffled ecstasy of the prelude. The curtain rose. Soon Lilli passionately broke in upon the song of the seaman, and the glorious symphony of human desire and renunciation went swirling by. The singers were in costume. Jean, warrior and lover, met his Isolde in the shock of passion and remorse, but did not flinch at the climax. Van Rooy and Brema were in the mood-key. At moments Easter thought she couldn't longer stand the suspense. She wished to cry, to roll on the floor, to tear her hair, to press her aching eyeballs till they fell out. She was in the centre of an emotional typhoon. Her previous life shrivelled up like a scroll in the clear flame of the mighty master of musical elixirs. Love and Death and Death and Love. First Things and Last. She was shocked and angered at Stone's commentary after the curtain had fallen, and the sparsely scattered auditory busily buzzing.