When Will, with fear and trembling, explained his plan half-an-hour later at the chalet to Andreas Hausberger, that wise man of business, instead of flouting the idea, entered into his suggestion with the utmost alacrity. He knew Linnet was still very fond of Will Deverill?—?and, being a practical man, he was perfectly ready to make capital out of her fondness. It was good for trade; and whatever was good for trade appealed at once to Andreas on the tenderest point of his nature. He had perfect confidence in Linnet’s honour?—?as well, indeed, he might have; but if she chose to cherish an innocent sentimental attachment of the German sort?—?in point of fact, a schw?rmerei?—?towards a young man she had known and liked before her marriage, that was no business of his; or, rather, it was just so much his business as it might help him to make a little more money out of her. Andreas Hausberger was a proud and self-respecting person, but his pride and his self-respect were neither of them touched by a purely romantic feeling on his young wife’s part towards a rising poet-composer who was anxious to write and score an opera to suit her. Indeed, he rather congratulated himself than otherwise on the thought that very few husbands of theatrical favourites had such very small cause for jealousy as he had.

So he listened to Will’s humming and hawing apology with a quiet face of subdued amusement. What a bother about nothing! If Will wrote a piece for Linnet, why, of course, he’d write it excellently, and write it with most intimate knowledge of her voice, as well as with close sympathy for all its shades of feeling. Will knew her exact compass, her range, her capabilities; he knew also her weak points, her limitations, her dramatic failings. And Linnet, for her part, was sure to sing well whatever Will wrote for her?—?both because it was Will’s, and because it was suited to her voice and character. The idea was an excellent one; how absurd to make a fuss about it!

“And he has some of it scored already, he says,” Linnet put in, half-trembling.

“Let me see it,” Andreas exclaimed, in his authoritative way; and he skimmed it over carefully. “H’m, h’m . . . that’s not bad,” he muttered from time to time as he went along . . . “suits her style very well . . . not at all a weak close; fine opportunity for that clear upper G of hers; excellently considered piece?—?have you tried it over, Linnet? I should think it ought to do very nicely indeed for you.”

“I just sang it a bit at sight,” Linnet answered, “on the hillside. When I met Herr Will first, we sat down and talked, because Herr Will was tired; and he showed me his score, and I tried part of it over a bit. But it was not that which you would quite call fairly trying it, for I had not seen it before, and had no time to study it. Still, I thought it very good?—?oh, exquisite, perfect!?—?and I should like so much the chance to sing in it.”

“Try it now!” Andreas said, in his dictatorial tone.

And Linnet, without any affected hesitation, or professional airs, opened her rich mouth naturally, and trilled forth upon Will’s delighted ear in a raptured flood her native first reading of his own graceful music.

“That’ll do!” Andreas said, with decision, as soon as she’d finished. “That’ll do, Linnet. We’ll arrange for it.”

And Will, leaning across to her over the plain deal table, as she stood blushing in front of him, exclaimed with delight, “Why, Linnet?—?Frau Hausberger, I mean?—?that’s charming, charming! I couldn’t have believed how pretty my own song was, till I heard you sing it!”

So that very day the whole matter was settled, as far, at least, as those three could settle it. It was decided and contracted that Will should definitely write an opera for Linnet; that he should offer it first to Mr Wells, the manager of the Harmony; and that if Wells refused it, it should go next to the Duke of Edinburgh’s, on condition that Linnet was engaged for the title-role. Before evening, Will had shouldered his knapsack once more (though Andreas would fain have constrained him to stay the night at their inn), and, with a timorous farewell to Linnet at the chalet door, had gone on his way rejoicing, to descend towards Oberwesel.

That interview gave him courage. During the course of the autumn he completed his piece, for he was a man of inspirations, and he worked very rapidly when the fit was upon him. The greater part of his opera he wrote and composed in the open air, beneath the singing larks, on those green Swiss hillsides. And the larks themselves did not sing more spontaneous, with heart elate, for pure joy of singing. That one short tête-à-tête with Linnet at her chalet had filled his teeming brain with new chords and great fancies. Words and notes seemed to come of themselves, and to suggest one another; moods seemed to mirror themselves in becoming music. Besides, Will thought with no little pleasure, this new venture would bring him, for a time at least, into closer personal connection with Linnet. While rehearsals and other preliminary arrangements went on, he must be thrown a great deal perforce into Linnet’s company. And how delightful to think they would be working together for a common end; that success, if achieved, would be due in part and in equal degrees to each of them.

Will didn’t return to London till the end of October. He had spent the time meanwhile partly in the Bernese Oberland, and partly, later, on the south side of the Alps, among the valleys and waterfalls of the Canton Ticino. But when he arrived at Charing Cross, it was not empty-handed; he carried in his portmanteau the almost complete manuscript of Cophetua’s Adventure, that exquisite romance of no particular time and place, with its fanciful theme and its curious episodes, which proved at last that poetry is not stone-dead on our English stage, and that exquisite verse wedded to exquisite harmonies has still its fair chance of a hearing in England. He had only to polish it at his rooms in Craven Street, before submitting it to the opinion of the manager of the Harmony.

Linnet came later. She had a two months’ engagement first to fulfil in Paris, where Will read, with a little pang of regret, in the Figaro how she had turned the heads and captured the hearts (if any) of ten thousand boulevardiers. Her very innocence and simplicity at once delighted and surprised the profoundly sophisticated Parisian mind. All the world of the foyer unanimously voted her tout ce qu’il-y-a de plus enfantin. “She has afforded us,” said a famous lady-killer of the Avenue Victor Hugo, “the rare pleasure of a persistent and unreasoning refusal.” So all Paris was charmed, as all Paris always is at any new sensation. An opera-singer insensible to the persuasiveness of diamonds and the eloquence of bank-notes?—?all Paris shugged its shoulders in incredulous astonishment. “Incroyable!” it muttered: “mais enfin, elle est jeune, cette petite?—??a viendra!”

So it was March before Linnet was in London once more. Andreas, ever business-like, had preceded her by a week or two, to conclude the needful arrangements with the people at the Harmony. By the time the prima donna herself arrived, everything was already well in train for the rehearsals. Linnet had studied her part, indeed, in Paris beforehand, till she knew every line, every word, every note of it. She had never learnt anything so easily in her life before, though she would hardly admit, even to herself, the true reason?—?because Will had written it. They met at the Harmony the very next afternoon, to discuss the details. Andreas was there, of course?—?he never left his wife’s side when business was in question; he must protect her interests: erect, inflexible, tall, powerful, big-built, with his resolute face and his determined mien, he was a man whom no theatrical manager on earth could afford to bully. He bargained hard with the Harmony for his wife’s s............