eveningbut also his very interest in what was coming from
the stage and the pit. He was gradually tiring; his baton arm
becoming heavier; as the second act mounted to what should
have been an impassioned outpouring of shining tone, he was
so bored as to wish he could go back to his desk to work
on that song.
Then the act was over; only one more to go. He scarcely
heard the applause. The twenty minutes’ rest in his dressing
room was just barely enough to give him the necessary
strength.
And suddenly, in the middle of the last act, he understood.
There was nothing new about the music. It was the old
Strauss all over againbut weaker, more dilute than ever.
Compared with the output of composers like Krafft, it doubt-
less sounded like a masterpiece to this audience. But he knew.
The resolutions, the determination to abandon the old
clich~s and mannerisms, the decision to say something new
they had all come to nothing against the force of habit. Being
brought to life again meant bringing to life as well all those
deeply graven reflexes of his style. He had only to pick up
his pen and they overpowered him with easy automatism, no
more under his control than the jerk of a finger away from
a flame.
His eyes filled; his body was young, but he was an old
man, an old man. Another thirty-five years of this? Never.
He had said all this before, centuries before. Nearly a half
century condemned to saying it all over again, in a weaker
and still weaker voice, aware that even this debased century
would come to recognize in him only the burnt husk of