Excellenz shook her befeathered head. Ordham, fascinated, as he often was by the intensifying of her wicked old face, wondered if visible poison were about to drop from her lips.
“She dare not. Photographs travel. Did hers reach America—and those vaudeville newspapers—cannot you fancy whole pages devoted to her past? They would rake it up in a week. Fortunate for her that America comes not to Munich and she goes no more to Bayreuth.”
“If she is too haughty to silence slander by an ingenious lie, why should she not be too haughty—too much the artist—to care? She must know that Munich has settled down into the belief that her past will not bear inspection. I have heard that much.”
“Ah, but it is all vague rumour now. Never was the woman, not publicly in the half-world, who did not congratulate herself that many people gave her the benefit of the doubt. And whatever Styr was in America, here in Germany she is a goddess walking on clouds. Her voice, her method, her acting, her superb appearance, which yet is not commonplace beauty, above all, her divine artist soul, have made her the idol of the public. In the Hof there are the usual jealousies and intrigues that have driven so many fine artists from Munich never to return, but the influence of the King, to say nothing of her own wit, tact, and will of cast iron, blunt every shaft. She is cleverer than all the good people in the world put together, and I, Olivia Nachmeister, who have seen so many great gifts disintegrate for want of that virile brain-mortar of many ingredients that compels success, greatly respect her.”
“An ivory statue waiting for the night of a public performance to come to life at the bidding of The Master. When she first appeared in Munich our men shook out all their battered flags of a thousand sieges. They bombarded that ivory fortress with notes, flowers, jewels, even with proposals of marriage after she had demonstrated her imperviousness to the more regular sort. The jewels she sent publicly to charities; of the other attentions she made no acknowledgment whatever. Not a man, barring the officials of the Hof, or perhaps a new composer, can boast that he has been received by her alone. She opens her doors once a month, she goes to routs, sometimes to dinners—at first she went a good deal into society, and, I fancy, was fascinated by it; but no man got a word alone with her. I believe she hates men—but mortally! If this be true, it is significant enough. It may be, however, that the monotonies of society merely bore her. She is the most intellectual woman I know.”