younger or elder friends ventured the slightest hint that there was anything like tenderness or passion in the world, the last trace of a smile vanished from her face, she stared dully before her, and occasionally she would lift her hand as though to ward off something, a gesture which seemed to apply to all men, and for all time.
Then it happened in the latter half of June that a singer from the north by the name of Sigurd Olse sang Tristan. His voice was clear and powerful, if not especially noble; he was of an almost superhumanly large build, and with a certain inclination to fulness; at times when in repose his face would be quite without distinction, but as soon as he began singing his steel-grey eyes would light up with a mysterious inner fire, and with his voice and his glance he seemed to sweep all away with him—especially women.
Kläre sat with her unoccupied colleagues in the company's box. She alone seemed to remain unmoved. The next morning Sigurd Olse was introduced to her in the director's office. She spoke a few friendly, but almost cool words to him about yesterday's performance. The same afternoon he paid her a visit, without waiting to be invited. Baron Leisenbohg and Fanny Ringeiser were present. Sigurd drank tea with them. He told of his parents, who lived in a little Norwegian fishing village; he told of the remarkable discovery of his talent by a travelling Englishman who had landed in a white yacht in a remote fjord; he told of his wife, an Italian, who had died on the Atlantic Ocean during their honeymoon and had been lowered into the sea. After he had left, the others remained for a long time plunged in silence. Fanny was examining with great care her empty tea-cup; Kläre had sat down at the piano and was resting her arms on the closed cover; the Baron was silently and anxiously immersed in the problem of why, during the account of Sigurd's wedding trip, Kläre had neglected that peculiar gesture with which since the death of the Prince she had brushed aside all hints of some further passionate or tender relations on this earth.
As further starring parts Sigurd sang Siegfried and Lohengrin. Each time Kläre sat unmoved in her box. But the singer, who associated with hardly any one but the Norwegian ambassador, appeared every afternoon at Kläre's, seldom failing to meet Fräulein Fanny Ringeiser there, and never failing to meet the Baron.
