I would have sunk far deeper, I believe, to obtain what I earned, for there were delightful moments of mutually absorbing discussions, only too quickly interrupted by Mr. Whitely or others of the party breaking in on our conversation. What was equal happiness to me was the association of you in my mind with the noblest of music. I can never hear certain movements of those operas without your image coming before me as clearly as if I saw your reflection in a mirror. And from that time one of my keenest pleasures has been to beg tickets from the musical critic of our staff, whenever one of the trilogy is to be given, and sit through the opera dreaming of those hours. I could write here every word you uttered, but what especially impressed itself upon my memory was something called out by the fate of Brunhilde. As we stood in the lobby waiting for the carriages, at the end of Die Walküre, you withdrew a little, as if still feeling the beauty and tragedy of the last act too deeply to take part in the chit-chat with which the rest of the party beguiled the time. I stood near you, but, respecting your mood, was silent too, until you finally broke the pause by saying, “I do not know whether it is Wagner’s music or because Brunhilde appeals to me, but I always feel that I have suffered as she does. It almost makes me believe in the theory of metempsychosis.” “Is it so much consciousness of a past, Miss Walton,” I suggested, “as prescience of the future? Woman’s story is so unvaryingly that of self-sacrifice for love that I should suppose Brunhilde’s fate would appeal to the sex as a prophecy rather than as a memory.” “Her punishment could have been far worse.” “Left a defenseless prey to the first comer?” “But surrounded by fire, so that the first comer must be a brave man.” “Do you value courage so highly?” “Yes. The truly brave, I think, cannot be mean, and without meanness there must be honor. I almost envy Brunhilde her walls of fire, which put to absolute proof any man who sought her. The most successful of men; the most intellectually brilliant, may be—By what can we to-day test courage and honor?” “There is as much as ever, Miss Walton. Is it no gain that courage has become moral rather than physical?” “Is it no loss that of all the men I know, there is not one of whom I can say with certainty, ‘He is a brave man’?” Our numbers were called at this point, and the conversation was never continued. Every word you had said recalled to me my former friend, and I understood your repugnance for anything cowardly.