He stepped to the door. Then he turned, and took the lamp, which she had removed from the holder when she lighted it. Holding the lamp in his right hand, he walked close up to her. Her eyes closed involuntarily. “I simply wanted to see whether it was really you,” he said with passionate contempt. “Yes, it is you,” he said scornfully, “it is you.” With that he placed the lamp on the table. “I don’t understand you, Daniel,” she said softly. She looked around for some object to rest her eyes on. “So I see. Good night.” “Daniel!” But he had already gone. The hall door closed with a bang. The house sang with solitude. The green threadbare sofa, the old, old smoke stains on the whitewashed ceiling, the five rickety chairs that reminded her of so many decrepit old men, the mirror with the gilded angel of stucco at the top—all these things were so tiring, so irksome, so annoying: they were like underbrush in the forest. Little brother! Little brother! IV Three evenings of the week were devoted to opera, the others to drama. The first Kapellmeister was a middle-aged man whose curly hair made him the idol of all flappers. He was lazy, uncultivated, and his name was Lebrecht. The director was an old stager who referred to the public about as a disrespectful footman refers to his lord. At Daniel’s suggestions for improving the repertory, he generally shrugged his shoulders. The operas in which he had the greatest confidence as drawing cards were “The Beggar Student,” “Fra Diavolo,” “L’Africaine,” and “Robert le Diable.” The singers and the orchestra were not much better than those of the lamented Dörmaul-Wurzelmann troupe. The possibility of arousing them to intensified effort or filling them with a semblance of intelligent enthusiasm for art was even less. Privileges based on length of service and the familiar traditions of indolence made æsthetic innovations unthinkable. Wherever careworn Philistines and slothful materialists occupy the seats from which art should raise her voice, advancement, progress born of sacrificial application, is out of the question: the most it is reasonable to expect is a bourgeois fulfilment of inescapable duties. In such, cases the flower droops; the dream vanishes; the free-born spirit has the choice of fighting day in and day out against the collective demons of pettiness and mediocrity, or of going down in admitted defeat. “Stuff the people can easily digest, my dear boy, that is the idea,” said the director. “What are you so excited about? Don’t you know these people haven’t a musical muscle in their whole soul?” said Lebrecht. “For nine consecutive years I have been singing F sharp at this opera house, and now here comes a _musicien_ from the backwoods and demands all of a sudden that I sing F!” This was the commentary of Fräulein Varini, the prima donna whose outstanding bosom had long been a source of human merriment to pit, stall, and gallery.