And, behold! a blasé clerk was actually stirred out of boredom by the surprising statement received from the box-office that a stall had just been returned, and he could have it now if he closed at once. So Power never knew what a trick Fortune had played him, since there can be little doubt that the impression made by the marvelous music and extraordinarily human appeal of "Faust" insensibly prepared him for the tragic events of the coming day. Imagine a man of musical bent, who had dwelt seven years among veritable savages, renewing his acquaintance with the muses by hearing the most poignant of stage love-stories told in Gounod's impassioned strains and interpreted by famous singers and a superb orchestra! The exquisite tenderness of the doomed lover's first address to Marguerite thrilled his inmost being. "Ne permettrez-vous pas, ma belle demoiselle, Qu'en vous offre le bras, pour faire le chemin?" He was struck by the coincidence that the woman to whom he was pledged should be named Marguerite! _Faire le chemin!_ Yes, they would soon be taking the long road of life together. What assured happiness seemed to breathe from each perfect note; yet what horror and despair would be the outcome of the man's ardor and the maid's shy diffidence! When Marguerite told Faust that she was _ni demoiselle_, _ni belle_, Power could hardly fail to recollect that his own Marguerite, not without cruel cause, was ever tortured by the fear that her disfigurement might some day turn him from her with loathing. Even the slaying of Valentine as the direct outcome of his sister's frailty seemed, to the overwrought imagination of one member of the audience, to bear an uncanny analogy to his mother's death. There remained one other point of contact between the story of the opera and Power's own life; but, fortunately for him, or his surcharged emotions might not have withstood the strain, he could not recognize as yet that last and most terrible similarity. As it was, his rapt interest in the opera attracted the attention of his neighbors in the stalls. As a girl whispered to her attendant cavalier: "That man near us--the man with the piercing eyes and worn face--seems to regard 'Faust' as history rather than allegory." "Perhaps he sees the allegory," was the answer, and the girl shrugged her pretty shoulders. She was young, and dwelt in a sheltered garden. To her, "Faust" was only an opera. It had nothing to do with the realities of life; which, if she were asked for a definition, consisted mainly of so ordering one's time as to miss no important social function.