IV


Pagliacci was to be followed as usual by "Cavalleria." It was the
swan song of the opera season.

In a part that he acted as well as he sang, Caruso had been
permitted finally to retire, wringing wet, to his dressing room.
With all the dignity of a man of genuine feeling and sensitiveness
he had taken call after call on the fall of the curtain and stood
bent almost double before the increasing breakers of applause. Once
more he had done his best in a role which demanded everything that
he had of voice and passion, comedy and tragedy. Once more, although
his soul was with his comrades in battle, he had played the fool and
broken his heart for the benefit of his good friends in front.

In her box on the first tier Mrs. Cooper Jekyll, in a dress
imaginatively designed to display a considerable quantity of her
figure, was surrounded by a party which attracted many glasses.
Alice Palgrave was there, pretty and scrupulously neat, even perhaps
a little prim, her pearls as big as marbles. Mrs. Alan Hosack made a
most effective picture with her black hair and white skin in a
geranium-colored frock--a Van Beers study to the life. Mrs. Noel
d'Oyly lent an air of opulence to the box, being one of those lovely
but all too ample women who, while compelling admiration, dispel
intimacy. Joan, a young daffodil, sat bolt upright among them, with