“Where was I engaged? Surely I told you. Didn’t I say something about the opera--‘Romeo and Juliet’?--that was to be the place, but I came to you instead. Ah, what have we missed! Was there ever such a poem written as ‘Romeo and Juliet’? Was there ever such music as Gounod’s? I thought the first time that I went to the opera that it would spoil Shakspere--how could it do otherwise? I asked. Could supreme perfection be improved upon? Before the balcony scene had come to an end I found that I had never before understood the glory of the poem. Ah, if you could understand what love means, my Phyllis, you would appreciate the poem and the music; the note of doom runs through it; that--that is wherein its greatness lies--passion and doom--passion and doom--that is my own life--the life of us women. We live in a whirlwind of passion, and fancy that we can step out of the whirlwind into a calm at any moment. We marry our husbands and we fancy that all the tragedy of human passion is over so far as we are concerned. ‘The haven entered and the tempest passed.’ Philip Marston’s terrible poem,--you have read it,--‘A Christmas Vigil’? ‘The haven entered,’--the whirlwind of passion has been left far away, we fancy. Oh, we are fools! It sweeps down upon us and then--doom--doom!” “My poor dear, you are talking wildly.” “If you only understood--perhaps you will some day understand, and then you will know what seems wild in my speech is but the incoherence of a poor creature who has been beaten to the ground by the whirlwind, and only saved from destruction by a miracle.” She had sprung from her place on the sofa and was pacing the room, her diamonds quivering, luminous as a shower of meteors--that was the fancy that flashed from her to Phyllis. Meteors--meteors--what a splendid picture she made flashing from place to place! Meteors--ah, surely there was the meteor-bird flashing across the drawing room! “Come and sit down, my dear Ella,” said Phyllis. “You are, as you know, quite unintelligible to me.” “Unintelligible to you? I am unintelligible to myself,” cried Ella. “Why should I be tramping up and down your room when I might be at this very moment----” She clutched Phyllis’ arm. “I want to stay with you all night,” she whispered. “I want to sleep in your bed with you, Phyllis. I want to feel your arms around me as I used to feel my mother’s long ago. Whatever I may say, you will not let me go, Phyllis?” “I will load you with chains,” said Phyllis, patting her lovely hair--it was no longer smooth. “Why should you want to go away from me? Cannot we be happy together once again as we used to be long ago?”