Then she gave a strange little cry, so that many people in the house looked towards her; and she leaned far back in the shadow of the deep box, while the reflected glare of the footlights just shone faintly on her features, making them look more like marble than ever.

The baroness was smiling to herself, amused at her companion's surprise, and the old count stared stolidly for a moment or two, and then turned suddenly to his daughter.
"Very curious is it," he was probably saying, "that this tenor should so much your Italian professor resemble." I could almost see his gray eyes sparkle angrily across the theatre.

But as I looked, a sound rose on the heated air, the like of which I have never known.

To tell the truth, I had not heard the first two acts, for I did not suppose there was any great difference between Nino's singing on the stage and his singing at home, and I still wished he might have chosen some other profession.

But when I heard this I yielded, at least for the time, and I am not sure that my eyes were as clear as usual.
"Spirto gentil dei sogni miei"-- the long sweet notes sighed themselves to death on his lips, falling and rising magically like a mystic angel song, and swaying their melody out into the world of lights and listeners; so pathetic, so heart-breaking, so laden with death and with love, that it was as though all the sorrowing souls in our poor Rome breathed in one soft sigh together.