"Oh, put it away!" she said, tears springing to her eyes. "Put it away! I cannot suffer it. That title exasperates me; it works upon my nerves. Doctor, doctor, I shall never be well again!" and she poured forth a long complaint. [Illustration: "PAULA HERSELF SAT BY THE WINDOW"] He feigned to make light of her fears; he comforted her. Casting about in his mind for things to say that should divert, interest her in her gray mood, he found this, which brought the sudden color to her face: "Did you not once ask me who lived in the apartment above? I know now. I will not take the credit of having applied myself to discover just on that hint of curiosity from you; I confess hearing it by chance. Your neighbor is the young _maestro_ Prospero C----, celebrated in his way. He has written an opera, to be produced for the first time precisely to-night. Those who know promise great things for it--" She had leaned forward, listening thirstily. The doctor could congratulate himself. When Veronika went to the door with him, he turned upon her suddenly, and asked, almost violently: "Why did you wait so long? Why did you not bring her to this climate before?" She looked at him in a puzzled way, and in her turn said something he could not understand. He appeared for a moment as if he meant to shake her, but shrugged his shoulders and brusquely left. Some who were present at the first night of "Parisina" remember well how when the curtain dropped on the first act and they looked about to discover whom they should salute, their attention was arrested by the strange apparition in one of the second-tier boxes. There, in a crimson velvet chair, sat very upright an unknown lady in a gown such as no one nowadays wears--a gown of cloth of gold, that might have figured at a court ball perhaps a century earlier. An ermine-lined mantle half covered her arms and neck, dainty thin and white as wax, and half extinguished the gleam of her heavy jewels. A wreath of roses was twined in her pale hair, that might have made one laugh in its _démodé_ pretentiousness but that one divined the lady to be a foreigner from some Northern country, where perhaps it is still customary to adorn the hair with a garland. She held her fan like a sceptre, her fingers stiffly closed on the pearl sticks. A mass of roses lay in her lap. She turned a colorless face upon the stage; her eyes were wide and glassy, and fixed as a somnambulist's. On the opposite side of the box, less clearly defined against the darkness, sat an elderly, soberly clad lady, whose face expressed a degree of uneasiness, misery, and fear almost pitiful--if not comical--to behold. She made no pretence of interest in the stage or the gleaming galleries, but watched her golden-haired companion with an unswerving, frightened eye. No one knew who these were, though many took pains to discover.