But the best was still to come. Sir Benedict took her back to her hotel by gondola, and although he may have found it slightly chilly, and though Monica was perpetually readjusting the scarf around her throat, it was romantic and moonlit enough. When he helped her ashore he thanked her for a delightful evening and kissed her hand. Monica started a little, and drew it away more quickly than was polite.

“What’s the matter?” said Sir Benedict.

“Nothing; nothing at all. Only—this seems all wrong. I mean, I feel very much your pupil and—I don’t know, I suppose I feel I ought to be thanking you—or something.”

“You make me feel fully a hundred and ten,” said Domdaniel, his bald head gleaming nacreously in the moonlight. “Still—good of you. I hope you’ll be my pupil for a long time. But after tonight I’m very happy to think of you as a fellow artist, as well.” And he kissed her hand again.

Monica was not at all sure how she found her way to bed.

The opera was scheduled for only eight performances in Venice, and when the first of these was successfully over, Monica was free to see something of the city, which she did in the company of Domdaniel. He was an ideal sightseer, for he knew when to stop, had friends in the city, was acquainted with the best restaurants and thoroughly understood the first principle of aesthetic appreciation, which is that it can usually be doubled by sitting down. Monica, flattered by her new status as fellow-artist, had never enjoyed herself so much. Surely such attention from the great man meant that she had finally made the grade, and was counted among the Eros-men rather than the Thanatossers? Indeed, she began to wonder if she might not be something of a sex-squaller as well, for as she travelled about the city with Domdaniel she observed young men eyeing her and pulling furiously at their ear-lobes; a few of the more daring flung out their hands, with the index-finger leading, as she passed, and Sir Benedict explained that these were gestures of admiration, comparable to the wolf-whistles which she had heard (always for other girls) at home.

Giles remained sullen, and she saw little of him. On the fourth day Domdaniel said, as they were at lunch together—

“Giles has got his way at last. He’s going to conduct tonight.”

“Oh? Will we have to rehearse with him?”

“No, no; but keep your eye on him very closely. He’s anxious to make a good job of it.”

“Of course. But I didn’t know he was scheduled to take any performances here. He never mentioned conducting to me. Are you going away?”

“No I’m not, and he isn’t. But he wants to conduct very much, and he’s persuaded me to persuade Petri that it will be all right—and I only hope it is.”

“Are you worried?”

“Well, it’s a difficult situation. You see, with my reputation, I’m rather a draw, and quite a bit of the preliminary seat-sale was based on that. People know that I do a good job with opera, and with a company which doesn’t contain any other names of international reputation—except for Render, and she’s not a singer—that’s important. But I can’t very well stuff that down Giles’ throat. After all, he’s the composer, and he’s extremely touchy. But he really isn’t a conductor.”

“He’s a marvellous accompanist.”

“My dear girl, quite a different thing. Conducting opera is a first-class juggling trick, and Giles is no juggler. He fidgets and flogs his people. He radiates dissatisfaction. You know how singers are about atmosphere. Once a sense of strain has been created the whole thing can go to bits. Still, I had to put it to Petri, when Giles was so insistent on it, and Petri wasn’t a bit easy to persuade. The trouble is, if I refuse to do this for him, he thinks I’m trying to keep him down.”

“How awful! What a tangle!”

“Oh, not really. You should see what an opera company can create in the way of hell when it tries. Still, I feel responsible to Petri, who expected me to be on the job every night.”

“Will you be there tonight?”

“Oh, I’ll probably drop in.”

Sir Benedict was there before the overture, in the back of a box, supposedly out of sight, though the singers were all aware of his presence. Signor Petri was very much in evidence, huge and imperial in evening dress, dropping into the dressing-rooms before curtain time to make trivial conversation in careful English, with very much the air of a man who is not saying what is on his mind. And Giles, taut and abrupt, visited every singer before the half-hour call, charging them to watch his beat, as there would be passages which he would take somewhat differently from Domdaniel.

And so he did, but for the first twenty minutes or so The Golden Asse went as well as usual. There was a different quality of tension on the stage, for singers were loyally determined to support their composer; but they could not rest confidently upon his conducting as they did upon that of the masterly Domdaniel. His beat was clear, and if his manner was peremptory and his face sometimes showed irritation (with what? with himself, the orchestra, or the singer? how can a tenor with his body working in one vast integrated effort to produce the best tone, allied with the suitable gesture, possibly be expected to know?) they had their own professional experience, and their own musicianship, to sustain them. But when the first of the important orchestral interludes came, it was clear that something was very wrong.

Of the fourteen hundred-odd people in the theatre, perhaps a hundred and fifty really knew what the trouble was; another five or six hundred sensed that something was amiss but could not have identified it; the remainder knew only that the music which had been so melodious before, had taken on a queer turn which was probably attributable to some unfamiliarity of idiom. But for several bars a section of the orchestra would be at cross-purposes with the rest; or a vigorous entry would come a beat too soon, or too late; or sounds which no system of musical logic could account for would assert themselves, only to be subdued by the furious, quenching gesture of the composer’s left hand.

As the performance progressed, it became nervous agony for the people on the stage, deeper mystery for the listeners. The singers, upon the whole, fared well, for nothing completely disorganizing happened to their part of the score, though portions of accompaniment, faintly familiar, yet unaccustomed, rose to their ears. Yet, because they were the most exposed part of the musical forces, they suffered, and their occupational sensitivity to atmosphere worked strongly against them. The philosophy of the orchestra manifested itself in shrugs, which could be seen from the boxes and galleries. But the only outright fiasco of the evening was the ballet of Cupid and Psyche; the six dancers engaged in it were exposed, for the eight minutes of its duration, as men and women who seemed not to know what they were doing. Even Lalage Render, who was admired wherever ballet was understood for her classic perfection, seemed suddenly to be hopping arbitrarily and rather foolishly about the stage, at odds with the music.

The frequent variation of time signature, which was one of the chief characteristics of Giles’ score, and which gave his music the variety and subtlety of nuance which was its chief beauty, seemed to be at the root of the trouble; the opera was not precisely as the company had learned it.

When, at last, the curtain descended, there was applause. For was not The Golden Asse the chief success of the Music Festival that year? And were there not many good people present who, having been assured that they were to hear a masterwork, were humbly ready to accept whatever they heard as belonging in that category? But it was not the kind of applause which had greeted the earlier performances. When Giles did not come at once from the pit to the stage, Amyas Palfreyman tried to find him, to appear before the curtain with the company. But the applause did not last long enough to make a thorough search possible. The company dispersed to their dressing-rooms greatly disturbed; they had taken a few calls, but they could not forget that at the end of the ballet of Cupid and Psyche there had been several hisses and some murmuring from the gallery.