Much later, as Monica lay in her bed, she thought of the party with satisfaction, and yet somewhat remotely. It had been the occasion for an outlet of the enthusiasm which her recital had evoked, and which had not expended itself in the applause at Fallen Hall. She had done her duty. She had tried at first to bring Dad into the circle of enthusiasm; he had appreciated her solicitude, but it was doubtful if he really knew any more about the affair than that Monny had, in some mysterious way, I made a hit with these big-bugs. It was not that he was stupid; he was dim, remote and, since the death of his wife, only partly alive. Aunt Ellen was quite different; it was not at all hard to find people for her to talk to; Cobbler had been very good to her. Alex and Kevin, astonishingly assured and competent at a party far above their accustomed welkin, had been kind about looking after Dad.

For Monica had not been able to do so. Everybody wanted to talk to her. One or two had liked Kubla Khan, and said so; some had spoken very kindly about the songs sung in memory of Mrs Gall. But Water Parted seemed to have impressed everybody.

Yet what strange things they found in it! “I wish I knew what was in your mind when you sang that!” Over and over again she heard that comment, differently phrased. Many, as soon as they had said it, gave her their notion of what the song had meant to her. A surprising number took it as a song of nostalgia for Canada, cherished by her during her exile abroad—an idea which had never entered her head. Some were convinced that it was a love-song.

What did it mean to her? It meant what Hiraeth meant to Ceinwen Griffiths—a longing for what was perhaps unattainable in this world, a longing for a fulfilment which was of the spirit and not of the flesh, but which was not specifically religious in its yearning. It meant her surge of feeling at the tomb of St Genevieve. It meant the aspiration toward that from which she drew her strength, and to which she returned when the concerns of daily life were set aside. It was the condition of being which lay beyond the Monica Gall who bossed Dad and Aunt Ellen into living together, who quarrelled and lost her dignity with her sister Alice, who spoke in honeyed words to the Bridgetower Trustees, who denied poor Veronica Bridgetower the money which might deliver her from a hateful bondage, who cheated and scraped for Giles Revelstoke, and endured all his whims in return for his absent-minded and occasional affection. It lay through, but beyond, the world of music to which she was now committed—the singer’s bondage which tonight had so plainly shown to be hers. It was the yearning which had been buried in the heart of her mother, denied and thwarted but there, forever alive and demanding. It was a yearning toward all the vast, inexplicable, irrational treasury from which her life drew whatever meaning and worth it possessed. It was the yearning for—? As Ceinwen’s song had said, not all the wise men in the world could ever tell her, but it would last until the end.

“I trust that you will not think that I have acted unwisely, but that is what has been done with the large sum of money which you made over to me in February. I hope that the enclosed reports will persuade you that it has been well spent.” Thus ran part of Monica’s letter to the Bridgetower Trustees, which Mr Snelgrove read to them at a meeting held in the following May.

“I’m sure Mother would have been greatly surprised to know that she had partly financed the production of a new opera,” said Solly, and the others could only agree.

And such an opera! The criticisms which Monica had enclosed were all agreed that it was an extraordinary work, containing flashes of genius, but freakish in the extreme. That the principal tenor should have been transmuted into an ass, by sorcery, was part of the story. But that he should bray—musically, of course, but still undoubtedly braying—for the whole of the middle act, was certainly hard to swallow. Part of the audience had refused to take it seriously as a musical work, and had been tempted to boo. But Stanhope Aspinwall, in two long articles which he wrote about the new opera, rebuked them sharply. Here, he said, was the most original musical talent to emerge for many years, asserting itself—pulling the public’s leg, perhaps, but that was the privilege of genius. His analysis of the work contained many criticisms which, he said, he had been obliged to bring against Giles Revelstoke’s work on several occasions—lyricism at the expense of dramatic movement, conventional passages of orchestration which seemed to have been thrown together in a hurry and never revised, a sacrifice of musical to literary values in some sections—but judged as a whole, a work of splendid qualities.

All of the critics agreed that in Monica Gall, the Canadian soprano who played the small but important role of Fotis, the serving-maid turned sorceress, the world of chamber opera had gained the most gifted singer of many years. She could not act particularly well, but that could be mended. It was good news indeed that the British Opera Association had chosen this work to perform in Venice, in September, at the Festival. There was even a kindly mention of the fact that some of the money for the excellently-mounted production had been supplied by a Canadian trust fund, founded for the furtherance of the arts; thus, the British critics agreed, the dominions were returning some of the loving care and cultural dower which had been lavished upon them in their early days by the Motherland. It was to be hoped that more might follow.

“Without knowing it, we seem to have covered ourselves with glory,” said the Dean, laughing.

But Miss Pottinger and Mr Snelgrove agreed in all seriousness.

“Certainly we made no mistake when we chose Monica Gall for the first beneficiary. I wonder if we shall have to choose another. May I say that I hope not?”

They all looked at Solly. They knew that since late April, Veronica had been pregnant.

“You cannot possibly hope that as fervently as I do, Mr Dean,” said Solly, with a laugh which took some of the bite out of the remark.

It was at about that same time that Chuck Proby (as Mr Gall could not be persuaded to do it) went to the cemetery vault, where the body of Mrs Gall was identified by him, and buried in the grave which the now soft ground permitted to be dug. The law demanded it, and someone has to do these things.

Monica had been five full days in Venice, and so far she had seen no more of it than could be glimpsed in flittings from her hotel to the theatre, and thence to Giles’ favourite restaurant. True, she had been several times in a gondola, which might have been romantic if she had not always been accompanied by her portable typewriter, or the very heavy suitcase which contained the orchestra parts for The Golden Asse, or Giles himself in his anti-Venetian mood. The city was a tourist-trap, he told her, and its romance was spurious; the Venetians were all scoundrels; had they not launched income tax, the science of statistics, and state censorship of books upon the world? He laughed away her meek proposals that, when the long days of work were done, they might see some of the sights; he had seen the sights, years ago, and they were not worth having. They had not come to Venice to be tourists, but to work.

Monica, who had not seen the sights, would not in the least have minded being a tourist. Giles laughed still more, and said that she was provincial. Apparently this was a very dreadful thing to be, and she timidly asked Domdaniel about it.

“Giles is playing the man of the world,” said he. “You mustn’t mind. Everybody’s provincial if you put ‘em in the right spot to show it, and nobody more so than the man who won’t be impressed, on principle. When we get this mess straightened out I’ll show you the town; I know some very pleasant people here.”