Ulick leaned out of the box and applauded; he dared even to cry encore, and, following suit, the musicians laid aside their instruments and, standing up in the orchestra, applauded with him.  The conductor tapped approval with his stick on the little harmonium, the chorus at the back cried encore.  It was a curious scene; these folk, whose one idea at rehearsal is to get it over as soon as possible, conniving at their own retention in the theatre.

The applause of her fellow artistes delighted her; she bowed to the orchestra, and, turning to the chorus, said that she would be pleased to sing the duet again if they did not mind the delay; and coming down the stage and standing in front of the box, she said to Ulick—­

“Well, are you satisfied?...  Is that your idea of Elizabeth?”

“So far as we have gone, yes, but I shall not know if your Elizabeth is my Elizabeth until I have heard the end of the act.”

Turning to Mr. Hermann Goetze, she said—­

“Mr. Dean has very distinct ideas how this part should be played.”

“Mr. Dean,” answered the manager, laughing, “would not go to Bayreuth three years ago because they played ‘Tannhaeuser.’  But one evening he took the score down to read the new music, and to his surprise he found that it was the old that interested him.  Mr. Dean is always making discoveries; he discovers all my singers after he has heard them.”

“And Mr. Hermann Goetze discovers his singers before he has heard them,” cried Ulick.

Mr. Hermann Goetze looked for a moment as if he were going to get angry, but remembering that Dean was critic to an important weekly, he laughed and put his handkerchief to his jaw, and Evelyn went up the stage to meet the Landgrave—­her father—­and she sang a duet with him.  As soon as it was concluded, the introduction to the march brought the first courtiers and pages on the stage, and with the first strains of the march the assembly, which had been invited to witness the competitions, was seated in the circular benches ranged round the throne of the Landgrave and his daughter.

Having consulted with his stage manager and superintended some alterations in the stage arrangements, Mr. Hermann Goetze, whose toothache seemed a little better again, left the stage, and coming into the box where Ulick was sitting, he sat beside him and affected some interest in his opinion regarding the grouping, for it had occurred to him that if Evelyn should take a fancy to this young man nothing was more likely than that she should ask to have his opera produced.  With the plot and some of the music he was already vaguely acquainted; and he had gathered, in a general way, that Ulick Dean was considered to be a man of talent.  The British public might demand a new opera, and there had been some talk of Celtic genius in the newspapers lately.  Dean’s “Grania” might make an admirable diversion in the Wagnerian repertoire—­only