Young Rupert Bartholomew had found himself pitchforked into a milieu that he neither understood nor criticized but in which he floundered in a state of complicated bliss and bewilderment. Isabella Sommita had caused him to play his one-act opera. She had listened with an approval that ripened quickly with the realization that the soprano role was, to put it coarsely, so large that the rest of the cast existed only as trimmings. The opera was about Ruth, and the title was The Alien Corn. (“Corn,” muttered Ben Ruby to Monty Reece, but not in the Sommita’s hearing, “is dead right.”) There were moments when the pink clouds amid which Rupert floated thinned and a small, ice-cold pellet ran down his spine and he wondered if his opera was any good. He told himself that to doubt it was to doubt the greatest soprano of the age, and the pink clouds quickly re-formed. But the shadow of unease did not absolutely leave him.

Mr. Reece was not musical. Mr. Ruby, in his own untutored way, was. Both accepted the advisability of consulting an expert, and such was the pitch of the Sommita’s mounting determination to stage this piece that they treated the matter as one of top urgency. Mr. Ruby, under pretense of wanting to study the work, borrowed it from the Sommita. He approached the doyen of Australian music critics, and begged him, for old times’ sake, to give his strictly private opinion on the opera. He did so and said that it stank.

“Menotti-and-water,” he said. “Don’t let her touch it.”

“Will you tell her so?” Mr. Ruby pleaded.

“Not on your Nelly,” said the great man and as an afterthought, “What’s the matter with her? Has she fallen in love with the composer?”

“Boy,” said Mr. Ruby deeply. “You said it.”

It was true. After her somewhat tigerish fashion the Sommita was in love. Rupert’s Byronic appearance, his melting glance, and his undiluted adoration had combined to do the trick.