say this, though I fear that it may impair for some people the vision
of her loveliness and her unique personality. She was the incarnation
of the matter-of-fact, because she appeared to be invariably quite
unconscious of the supremacy of her talents. She was not weighed down
by them, as many artists of distinction are weighed down. She carried
them lightly, seemingly unaware that they existed. Thus no one could
have guessed that that very night she had left the stage of the Opera
after an extraordinary triumph in her greatest rôle--that of Isolde in
"Tristan."

And so her presence by my side soothed away almost at once the
excitation and the spiritual disturbance of the scene through which I
had just passed with Emmeline; and I was disposed, if not to laugh at
the whole thing, at any rate to regard it calmly, dispassionately, as
one of the various inexplicable matters with which one meets in a
world absurdly called prosaic. I was sure that no trick had been
played upon me. I was sure that I had actually seen in the crystal
what I had described to Emmeline, and that she, too, had seen it. But
then, I argued, such an experience might be the result of hypnotic
suggestion, or of thought transference, or of some other imperfectly
understood agency.... Rosetta Rosa an instrument of misfortune! No!

When I looked at her I comprehended how men have stopped at nothing
for the sake of love, and how a woman, if only she be beautiful
enough, may wield a power compared to which the sway of a Tsar, even a
Tsar unhampered by Dumas, is impotence itself. Even at that early
stage I had begun to be a captive to her. But I did not believe that
her rule was malign.

"Mr. Foster," she said, "I have asked you to see me to my carriage,