helmsman invariably holds the tiller at such an angle that the ship must be gyrating like a teetotum, thus offering a simple, if coarse, explanation of Isolda's qualms. The music up till now has been made up of the fragment last quoted of the sailor's song, and one of the love themes--a simple phrase of four notes, out of which lengthy passages are woven. When the curtain is drawn a fragment of the sea-song is again heard, and then this love phrase is taken up by the orchestra and filled with sinister, smouldering passion. Isolda's anger gathers and mounts against Tristan, and when this theme arrives [Illustration: Some bars of music] it is the announcement of her determination that death for both of them shall end an impossible situation. This, however, we do not learn until later; for the moment the theme conveys little special meaning to us. It is when we hear the drama a second time that its appalling tragic force is felt. Isolda tells Brangaena to command Tristan to come to the pavilion. Kurvenal, his servant, sings a scoffing song, in which all the sailors join, in spite of Tristan's endeavour to stop them. Brangaena rushes back and hurriedly closes the curtains. Isolda, half-crazed, tells the whole story as it occurred previous to the rising of the curtain--how she nursed the wounded Tristan, found him to be the slayer of her betrothed, took his sword and was about to kill him, when he opened his eyes, and the sword dropped from her listless fingers. Brangaena is sufficiently astonished; Isolda works herself up into a paroxysm of fury; and now the drama is indeed on foot. Brangaena has a long, lovely, soothing passage to sing, and in her over-anxiety to serve her mistress she accidentally suggests to Isolda the very means of revenging herself on Tristan, and terminating at the same time her own misery. "You remember your mother's art," says Brangaena: "do you think she would have sent me over-seas with you without a means of helping you?" Isolda knows it is the love-potion she means. She has only to drink the contents of a small flask, and old King Mark will become at least tolerable to her. The flask is in a casket, and another is there, as Isolda knows, full of a deadly poison. She commands Brangaena to pour out the poison. Brangaena, terrified, beseeches, implores; but Isolda insists; and in the midst of the dispute the sailors suddenly roar out their "Yo-heave-ho!" The sea had ceased, as it will in moments of preoccupation or intense emotion, to haunt our ears for a time; now it breaks in again, and we feel as if it had really never ceased. Kurvenal enters, and tells them to get ready to land. Isolda tells him point-blank that she will not stir until Tristan has come to demand her pardon for a sin he has committed. Brusquely, Kurvenal says he will convey the message; Brangaena again prays to her mistress to spare her. "Wilt thou be true?" replies Isolda; and the voice of Kurvenal is heard: "Sir Tristan!"