"Eh? What? But it's _Madama Butterfly_, you know--Oh, yes, of course: I forgot. Still, what'll interest you, once you get there, will be what interests everybody else--and that's not the stage and not the orchestra. Now, look here: I'm with the Newberrys, you know--the Preston Newberrys----" "I don't know," said Stainton. "Well, you will, my boy; you will. That's just the point. We'll call a taxi and motor there together--it's just a step to the Metropolitan--and then, after the first act, I'll come round to you and take you over to meet 'em. What do you say?" Stainton said what he was expected to say, which was, of course, that he would be delighted to meet any friends of Holt, and so it befell that the two men went to the opera-house together and parted at the door only with the certainty of meeting soon again. Yet, the miner was still glowing with the thrill of his new life. "I'm young!" he repeated to himself as he was shown to his seat. And he felt young. He felt that he had never yet lived and that he was now about to live; and he thanked Heaven that he had kept himself trained for the experience. He had dined slowly, as befits a man that has earned his leisure, and his conversation with Holt had not been hurried. Consequently, when he reached his place, the first act of _Madama Butterfly_ was already well over. With the voice of Apollo and the figure of an elephant, the tenor, bursting through the uniform of a naval officer with a corpulence that would endanger a battleship, was engaged in that vocal assault upon a fortress of heavy orchestration which is the penance of all that have to sing the role of "Pinkerton." Stainton listened and tried to enjoy. He listened until the curtain fell at length upon the beginning of the inevitable tragedy, until the lights flashed up about him, and he found himself looking straight into the eyes of a young girl in a lower box not thirty feet away. About him swept the broad curve of boxes that has been called "The Diamond Horseshoe," filled with wonderful toilettes and beautiful women, but Stainton did not see these. In the particular box toward which he was looking there were three other people: there was a matronly woman in what appeared to be brocade; there was a sleek, weary-eyed, elderly man, and there was another man faintly suggested in the background, as the lover of the mistress is faintly suggested in Da Vinci's masterpiece--but Stainton was no more conscious of this trio than he was of the gowns and women of the broad horseshoe. He saw, or was conscious of seeing, only that girl.