"Yes, I'm from Richmond. I was born in Virginia. Why do you ask? Is my accent so marked?" She had a good central grip on herself and presently the vibrations ceased. Stone was bored and yearned for a cigarette. "I see Seidl--I'll go out for a smoke." At once Ulick seated himself beside Easter. Eagerly he attempted to take the gloved hand next to him. She crossed her arms. Then she said in commonplace tones: "Do you know, Mr. Invern--I don't miss that lovely apartment. They put me on the third floor. I am away from the noisy kitchen and I can catch a bit of the sky instead of that depressing brick wall--" He whispered, and his voice was hoarse, as if from excess of feeling: "How can you ever forgive me--ever forgive me--Miss Richmond--pardon me, that was your name--down East, in New Hampshire...." Easter seemed to see smoke. She didn't answer him. Then, in her broadest most cordial Southern tones, she asked: "Whatever in the world are you talking about, mister?" He thought: I'm on the wrong tack. She won't acknowledge that we met--and what a meeting--but, wait, I'll make her acknowledge--everything. She went on in her desultory conversational manner: "I was reared in Richmond. That's not my name. What did Mr. Stone call you?" He was nettled. Absurd. As if she could pull the wool over his eyes, those clear piercing blue eyes that looked at life so amusedly, so cynically. Then Seidl rapped for silence and the curtain rose on the love-scene of all musical love-scenes. As she watched the gothic head of Seidl she thought of him as a magician whose wand evoked magic spells, but soon she forgot Time and Space and was living in that enchanting fairyland of high daring and passion transfigured. The deep voice of Brangaene warned the lovers. Tremulous horns told of the King's return. Edouard de Reszke intoned his: "Tristan!" in the inflexions of which are compressed the reproach of betrayed friendship, and chivalry that has vanished. Passion--passion, the yearnings of the man for the woman, and the desire of the woman for the desire of the man, had summarily abolished the walls of duty, of earthy morals. A hand slipped into hers. She did not resist and the hand was hungrily held. The spell was upon her. Music, the most sensual of the arts, for it tells us of the hidden secrets of sex, immersed her body and soul in a magnetic bath; the sound-fluid entered the porches of her ears. She was as a slave manacled within the chalked circle of a wizard. To step across the line would have been an ineluctable attempt. She did not try. And to make more concrete the illusion of a consciousness transposed from the key of her everyday life, the embracement of her arm by this strange man--wasn't he a stranger to her?--sent her spirit cowering into supernatural coverts. What was she? What was he? Tristan and Isolde; Isolde and Tristan. She identified herself with the lovers, who, like the crepuscular figures stitched on some mediaeval tapestry, dreamily