So swift, so overwhelming was the shock that it blotted out all pale memories of my youth, Ernesta, Kitty, Emelia, even the radiant Acquilla, so fragrantly close to my side, Acquilla who a moment before seemed offered up to me in some incredible dream from the Arabian nights. And yet I did not even know if Dianne still existed or was nothing but the empty record of a great artist of another century. But Schiappa’s performance of ‘Tristan’ aroused my indignation. Due to the female domination of the new society, an incredible liberty had been taken with the part. A complete transposition of rôles had been worked. It was Isolde now who visualized the possessive passion and Tristan the surrender. If it had not been so monstrously grotesque I should have burst into laughter. As it was, I was left staring and dumfounded. “Well, Bogardus,” said Acquilla, when the opera had ended and the theatre emerged from its darkness, “I am anxious to know what your criticisms will be. For of course you lived when the Wagnerian tradition was still young.” “I am overwhelmed,” I replied, coming out of the revery into which the exquisite performance of Dianne had plunged me. “But first of all, thank heavens, that you have found a genius to edit the score.” “In what way? But that must have taken place in the last century then,” Acquilla added, after a minute’s reflection. “In the first place, you have cut the heavy anti-climax at the end of the second act, where King Mark surprises the lovers and given it the natural dramatic expression it demanded.” “But how was it in your day?” I described the lengthy and ponderous recital of King Mark’s grievances, which to my modest imagination had always been an anti-climax to the glorious mounting ecstasy of the lovers’ song. “But even in your day, you edited and rearranged Shakespeare, why not Wagner, who after all, was not a dramatist?” “True, but men are traditionalists,” I replied ironically. “You see, you women have brought a fresh point of view to the consideration of all things.” “True,” said Acquilla, without smiling, “Dianne will be tremendously interested.” “You know her?” I said with a catch of my breath. “Of course! Would you like to meet her?” “Now? Then she exists?” I exclaimed, my imagination racing. “Of course she exists. Oh, I see. You thought perhaps you were listening to a record taken fifty or a hundred years ago?” “Nothing would surprise me, even to find that she was an automaton,” I answered, laughing. “You know, for a moment I wasn’t sure about you.” “We have evolved automatons that are really extraordinary,” said Acquilla, looking at me with the mystified expression which she assumed whenever I gave way to my hilarity. “But they remain machines. No indeed, Dianne is very much alive. She has only just begun her career.”