Maurice Guest by Henry Handel Richardson (page 3)

the metre of the lines, read through one after another of the poems he liked best. At a particular favourite, he stopped playing and held the book in both hands.

He had hardly begun anew when the door of his room was unceremoniously opened, and Dove entered, in the jocose way he adopted when in a rosy mood. Maurice made a movement to conceal his book, merely in order to avoid the explanation he new must follow; but was too late; Dove had espied it. He did not belie himself on this occasion; he was extremely astonished to find Maurice “still at it,” but much more so to see a book open before him; and he vented his surprise loudly and wordily.

“Liszt used to read the newspaper,” said Maurice, for the sake of saying something. He had swung round in the piano-chair, and he yawned as he spoke, without attempting to disguise it.

“Why, yes, of course, why not?” agreed Dove cordially, afraid lest he had seemed discouraging. “Why not, indeed? For those who can do it. I wish I could. But will you believe me, Guest”–here he seated himself, and settled into an attitude for talking, one hand inserted between his crossed knees–“will you believe me, when I say I find it a difficult business to read at all?–at any time. I find it too stimulating, too ANREGEND, don’t you know? I assure you, for weeks now, I have been trying to read PAST AND PRESENT, and have not yet got beyond the first page. It gives one so much to think about, opens up so many new ideas, that I stop myself and say: ‘Old fellow, that must be digested.’ This, I see, is poetry”–he ran quickly and disparagingly through Maurice’s little volume, and laid it down again. “I don’t care much for poetry myself, or for novels either. There’s so much in life worth knowing that is true, or of some use to one; and besides, as we all know, fact is stranger than fiction.”

They spoke also of Furst’s performance the evening before, and Dove gave it its due, although he could not conceal his opinion that Furst’s star would ultimately pale before that of a new-comer to the town, a late addition to the list of Schwarz’s pupils, whom he, Dove, had been “putting up to things a bit.” This was a “Manchester man” and former pupil of Halle’s, and it would certainly not be long before he set the place in a stir. Dove had just come from his lodgings, where he had been permitted to sit and hear him practise finger-exercises.

“A touch like velvet,” declared Dove. “And a stretch!–I have never seen anything like it. He spans a tenth, nay, an eleventh, more easily than we do an octave.”

The object of Dove’s visit was, it transpired, to propose that Maurice should accompany him that evening to the theatre, where DIE WALKURE was to be performed; and as, on this day, Dove had reasons for seeing the world through rose-coloured glasses, he suggested, out of the fulness of his heart, that they should also invite Madeleine to join them. Maurice was nothing loath to have the meeting with her over, and so, though it was not quite three o’clock, they went together to the MOZARTSTRASSE.

They found Madeleine before her writing-table, which was strewn with closely written sheets. This was mail-day for America, she explained, and begged the young men to excuse her finishing an important letter to an American journalist, with whom she had once “chummed up” on a trip to Italy.

“One never knows when these people may be of use to one,” she was accustomed to say.

Having addressed and stamped the envelope, and tossed it to the others, she rose and gave a hand to each. At Maurice, she smiled in a significant way.

“You should have stayed, my son. Some one came, after all.”

Maurice laid an imploring finger on his lips, but Dove had seized the opportunity of glancing at his cravat in the mirror, and did not seem to hear.

She agreed willingly to their plan of going to the theatre; she had thought of it herself; then, a girl she knew had asked her to come to hear her play in ENSEMBLESPIEL.

“However, I will let that slip. Schelper and Moran-Olden are to sing; it will be a fine performance. I suppose some one is to be there,” she said laughingly to Dove, “or you would not be of the party.”

But Dove only smiled and looked sly.

Without delay, Madeleine began to detail to Maurice, the leading motives on which the WALKURE was built up; and Dove, having hummed, strummed and whistled all those he knew by heart, settled down to a discourse on the legitimacy and development of the motive, and especially in how far it was to be considered a purely intellectual implement. He spoke with the utmost good-nature, and was so unconscious of being a bore that it was impossible to take him amiss. Madeleine, however, could not resist, from time to time, throwing in a “Really!” “How extraordinary!” “You don’t say so!” among his abstruse remarks. But her sarcasm was lost on Dove; and even if he had noticed it, he would only have smiled, unhit, being too sensible and good-humoured easily to take offence.

It was always a mystery to his friends where Dove got his information; he was never seen to read, and there was little theorising about art, little but the practical knowledge of it, in the circles to which he belonged. But just as he went about picking up small items of gossip, so he also gathered in stray scraps of thought and information, and being by nature endowed with an excellent memory, he let nothing that he had once heard escape him. He had, besides, the talker’s gift of neatly stringing together these tags he had pulled off other people, of connecting them, and giving them a varnish of originality.

“By no means a fool,” Madeleine was in the habit of saying of him. “He would be easier to deal with if he were.”

Here, on the leading motive as handled by Wagner and Wagner’s forerunners, he had an unwritten treatise ripe in his brain. But he had only just compared the individual motives to the lettered ribbons that issue from the mouths of the figures in medieval pictures, and began to hint at the IDEE FIXE of Berlioz, when he was interrupted by a knock at the door.

“HEREIN!” cried Madeleine in her clear voice; and at the sight of the person who opened the door, Maurice involuntarily started up from his chair, and taking his stand behind it, held the back of it firmly with both hands, in self-defence.

It was Louise.

On seeing the two young men, she hesitated, and, with the door-handle still in her hand, smiled a faint questioning smile at Madeleine, raising her eyebrows and showing a thin line of white between her lips.

“May I come in?” she asked, with her head a little on one side.

“Why, of course you know you may,” said Madeleine with some asperity.

And so Louise entered, and came forward to the table at which they had been sitting; but before anything further could be said, she raised her arms to catch up a piece of hair which had fallen loose on her neck. The young men were standing, waiting to greet her, Maurice still behind his chair; but she did not hurry on their account, or “just on their account did not hurry,” as Madeleine mentally remarked.

Both watched Louise, and followed her movements. To their eyes, she appeared to be very simply dressed; it was only Madeleine who appreciated the cost and care of this seeming simplicity. She wore a plain, close-fitting black dress, of a smooth, shiny stuff, which obeyed and emphasised the lines and outlines of her body; and, as she stood, with her arms upraised, composedly aware of being observed, they could see the line of her side rising and falling with the rise and fall of each breath. Otherwise, she wore a large black hat, with feathers and an overhanging brim, which threw shadows on her face, and made her eyes seem darker than ever.

Letting her arms drop with a sigh of relief, she shook hands with Dove, and Dove–to Madeleine’s diversion and Maurice’s intense disgust–introduced Maurice to her as his friend. She looked full at the latter, and held out her hand; but before he could take it, she withdrew it again, and put both it and her left hand behind her back.

“No, no,” she said. “I mustn’t shake hands with you to-day. Today is Friday. And to give one’s hand for the first time on a Friday would bring bad luck–to you, if not to me.”

She was serious, but both the others laughed, and Maurice, having let his outstretched hand fall, coloured, and smiled rather foolishly. She did not seem to notice his discomfiture; turning to Madeleine, she began to speak of a piece of music she wished to borrow; and then Maurice had a chance of observing her at his ease, and of listening to her voice, in which he heard all manner of impossible things. But while Madeleine, with Dove’s assistance, was looking through a pile of music, Louise came suddenly up to him and said: “You are not offended with me, are you?” She had a low voice, with a childish cadence in it, which touched him like a caress.

“Offended? I with you?” He meant to laugh, but his voice shook.

She stared at him, openly astonished, not only at his words, but also at the tone in which they were said; and the strange, fervent gaze bent on her by this man whom she saw for the first time in her life, confused her and made her uneasy. Slowly and coldly she turned away, but Madeleine, who was charitably occupying Dove as long as she could, did not take any notice of her. And as the young man continued to stare at her, she looked out of the window at the lowering grey sky, and said, with a shudder: “What a day for June!”

All eyes followed hers, Maurice’s with the rest; but almost instantly he brought them back again to her face.

“Louise is a true Southerner,” said Madeleine; “and is wretched if there’s a cloud in the sky.”

Louise smiled, and he saw her strong white teeth. “It’s not quite as bad as that,” she said; and then, although herself not clear why she should have answered these searching eyes, she added, looking at Maurice: “I come from Australia.”

If she had said she was a visitant from another world, Maurice would not, at the moment, have felt much surprise; but on hearing the name of this distant land, on which he would probably never set foot, a sense of desolation overcame him. He realised anew, with a pang, what an utter stranger he was to her; of her past life, her home, her country, he knew and could know nothing.

“That is very far away,” he said, speaking out of this feeling, and then was vexed with himself for having done so. His words sounded foolish as they lingered on in the stillness that followed them, and would, he believed, lay him open to Madeleine’s ridicule. But he had not much time in which to repent of them; the music had been found, and she was going again. He heard her refuse an invitation to stay: she had an engagement at half-past four. And now Dove, who, throughout, had kept in the background, looked at his watch and took up his hat: he had previously offered, unopposed, to do the long wait outside the theatre, which was necessary when one had no tickets, and now it was time to go. But when Louise heard the word theatre, she laid a slim, ungloved hand on Dove’s arm.

“The very thing for such a night!”

They all said “AUF WIEDERSEHEN!” to one another; she did not offer to shake hands again, and Maurice nursed a faint hope that it was on his account. He opened the window, leant out, and watched them, until they went round the corner of the street.

Madeleine smiled shrewdly behind his back, but when he turned, she was grave. She did not make any reference to what had passed, nor did she, as he feared she would, put questions to him: instead, she showed him a song of Krafft’s, and asked him to play the accompaniment for her. He gratefully consented, without knowing what he was undertaking. For the song, a setting of a poem by Lenau, was nominally in C sharp minor; but it was black with accidentals, and passed through many keys before it came to a close in D flat major. Besides this, the right hand had much hard passage-work in quaint scales and broken octaves, to a syncopated bass of chords that were adapted to the stretch of no ordinary hand.

“LIEBLOS UND OHNE GOTT AUF EINER HAIDE,” sang Madeleine on the high F sharp; but Maurice, having collected neither his wits nor his fingers, began blunderingly, could not right himself, and after scrambling through a few bars, came to a dead stop, and let his hands fall from the keys.

“Not to-day, Madeleine.”

She laughed good-naturedly. “Very well–not to-day. One shouldn’t ask you to believe to-day that DIE GANZE WELT IST ZUM VERZWEIFELN TRAURIG.”

While she made tea, he returned to the window, where he stood with his hands in his pockets, lost in thought. He told himself once more what he found it impossible to believe: that he was going to see Louise again in a few hours; and not only to see her, but to speak to her, to be at her side. And when his jubilation at this had subsided, he went over in memory all that had just taken place. His first impression, he could afford now to admit it, had been almost one of disappointment: that came from having dreamed so long of a shadowy being, whom he had called by her name, that the real she was a stranger to him. Everything about her had been different from what he had expected–her voice, her smile, her gestures–and in the first moments of their meeting, he had been chill with fear, lest–lest . . . even yet he did not venture to think out the thought. But this first sensation of strangeness over, he had found her more charming, more desirable, than even he had hoped; and what almost wrung a cry of pleasure from him as he remembered it, was that not the smallest trifle–no touch of coquetry, no insincerely spoken word–had marred the perfect impression of the whole. To know her, to stand before her, he recognised it now, gave the lie to false slander and report. Hardest of all, however, was it to grasp that the meeting had actually come to pass and was over: it had been so ordinary, so everyday, the most natural thing in the world; there had been no blast of trumpets, nor had any occult sympathy warned her that she was in the presence of one who had trembled for weeks at the idea of this moment and again he leaned forward and gazed at the spot in the street, where she had disappeared from sight. He was filled with envy of Dove–this was the latter’s reward for his unfailing readiness to oblige others–and in fancy he saw Dove walking street after street at her side.

In reality, the two parted from each other shortly after turning the first corner.

On any other day, Dove would have been still more prompt to take leave of his companion; but, on this particular one, he was in the mood to be a little reckless. In the morning, he had received, with a delightful shock, his first letter from Ephie, a very frank, warmly written note, in which she relied on his great kindness to secure her, WITHOUT FAIL–these words were deeply underscored–two places in the PARQUET of the theatre, for that evening’s performance. Not the letter alone, but also its confiding tone, and the reliance it placed in him, had touched Dove to a deep pleasure; he had been one of the first to arrive at the box-office that morning, and, although he had not ventured, unasked, to take himself a seat beside the sisters, he was now living in the anticipation of promenading the FOYER with them in the intervals between the acts, and of afterwards escorting them home.

On leaving Louise he made for the theatre with a swinging stride–had he been in the country, stick in hand, he would have slashed off the heads of innumerable green and flowering things. As it was, he whistled–an unusual thing for him to do in the street–then assumed the air of a man hard pressed for time. Gradually the passers-by began to look at him with the right amount of attention; he jostled, as if by accident, one or two of those who were unobservant, then apologised for his hurry. It was not pleasurable anticipation alone that was responsible for Dove’s state of mind, and for the heightening and radiation of his self-consciousness. In offering to go early to the theatre, and to stand at the doors for at least three-quarters of an hour, in order that the others, coming considerably later might still have a chance of gaining their favourite seats: in doing this, Dove was not actuated by a wholly unselfish motive, but by the more complicated one, which, consciously or unconsciously, was present beneath all the friendly cares and attentions he bestowed on people. He was never more content with himself, and with the world at large, than when he felt that he was essential to the comfort and well-being of some of his fellow-mortals; than when he, so to speak, had a finger in the pie of their existence. It engendered a sense of importance, gave life fulness and variety; and this far outweighed the trifling inconveniences such welldoing implied. Indeed, he throve on them. For, in his mild way, Dove had a touch of Caesarean mania–of a lust for power.

Left to herself, Louise Dufrayer walked slowly home to her room in the BRUDERSTRASSE, but only to throw a hasty look round. It was just as she had expected: although it was long past the appointed time, he was not there. At a flower-shop in a big adjoining street, she bought a bunch of many-coloured roses, and with these in her hands, went straight to where Schilsky lived.

Mounting to the third floor of the house in the TALSTRASSE, she opened, without ceremony, the door of his room, which gave direct on the landing; but so stealthily that the young man, who was sitting with his back to the door, did not hear her enter. Before he could turn, she had sprung forward, her arms were round his neck, and the roses under his nose. He drew his face away from their damp fragrance, but did not look up, and, without removing his cigarette, asked in a tone of extreme bad temper: “What are you doing here, Lulu? What nonsense is this? For God’s sake, shut the door!”

She ruffled his hair with her lips. “You didn’t come. And the day has seemed so long.”

He tried to free himself, putting the roses aside with one hand, while, with his cigarette, he pointed to the sheets of music-paper that lay before him. “For a very good reason. I’ve had no time.”

She went back and closed the door; and then, sitting down on his knee, unpinned her big hat, and threw it and the roses on the bed. He put his arm round her to steady her, and as soon as he held her to him, his ill-temper was vanquished. He talked volubly of the instrumentation he was busy with. But she, who could point out almost every fresh note he put on paper, saw plainly that he had not been at work for more than a quarter of an hour; and, in a miserable swell of doubt and jealousy, such as she could never subdue, she asked:

“Were you practising as well?”

He took no notice of these words, and she did not trust herself to say more, until, with his free hand, he began jotting again, making notes that were no bigger than pin-heads. Then she laid her hand on his. “I haven’t seen you all day.”

But he was too engrossed to listen. “Look here,” he said pointing to a thick-sown bar. “That gave me the deuce of a bother. While here “–and now he explained to her, in detail, the properties of the tenor-tuba in B, and the bass-tuba in F, and the use to which he intended to put these instruments. She heard him with lowered eyes, lightly caressing the back of his hand with her finger-tips. But when he ceased speaking, she rubbed her cheek against his.

“It is enough for to-day. Lulu has been lonely.”

Not one of his thoughts was with her, she saw that, as he answered: “I must get this finished.”

“To-night?”

“If I can. You know well enough, Lulu, when I’m in the swing—-“

“Yes, yes, I know. If only it wouldn’t always come, just when I want you most.”

Her face lost its brightness; she rose from his knee and roamed about the room, watched from the wall by her pictured self.

“But is there ever a moment in the day when you don’t want me? You are never satisfied.” He spoke abstractedly, without interest in the answer she might make, and, relieved of her weight, leant forward again, while his fingers played some notes on the table. But when she began to let her hands stray over the loose papers and other articles that encumbered chairs, piano and washstand, he raised his head and watched her with a sharp eye.

“For goodness’ sake, let those things alone, can’t you?” he said after he had borne her fidgeting for some time.

“You have no secrets from me, I suppose?” She said it with her tenderest smile, but he scowled so darkly in reply that she went over to him again, to touch him with her hand. Standing behind him, with her fingers in his hair, she said: “Just to-day I wanted you so much. This morning I was so depressed that I could have killed myself.”

He turned his head, to give her a significant glance.

“Good reason for the blues, Lulu. I warned you. You want too much of everything. And can’t expect to escape a KATER.”

“Too much?” she echoed, quick to resent his words. “Does it seem so to you? Would days and days of happiness be too much after we have been separated for a week?–after Wednesday night?–after what you said to me yesterday?”

“Yesterday I was in the devil of a temper. Why rake up old scores? Now go home. Or at least keep quiet, and let me get something done.”

He shook his head free of her caressing hand, and, worse still, scratched the place where it had lain. She stood irresolute, not venturing to touch him again, looking hungrily at him. Her eyes fell on the piece of neck, smooth, lightly browned, that showed between his hair and the low collar; and, in an uncontrollable rush of feeling, she stooped and kissed it. As he accepted the caress, without demur, she said: “I thought of going to the theatre to-night, dear.”

He was pleased and showed it. “That’s right–it’s just what you need to cheer you up.”

“But I want you to come, too.”

He struck the table with his fist. “Good God, can’t you get it into your head that I want to work?”

She laughed, with ready bitterness. “I should think I could. That’s nothing new. You are always busy when I ask you to do anything. You have time for everything and every one but me. If this were something you yourself wanted to do to-night, neither your work nor anything else would stand in the way of it; but my wishes can always be ignored. Have you forgotten already that I only came home the day before yesterday?”

He looked sullen. “Now don’t make a scene, Lulu. It doesn’t do a whit of good.”

“A scene!” she cried, seizing on his words. “Whenever I open my lips now, you call it a scene. Tell me what I have done, Eugen! Why do you treat me like this? Are you beginning to care less for me? The first evening, the very first, I get home, you won’t stay with me–you haven’t even kept that evening free for me–and when I ask you about it, and try to get at the truth–oh, do you remember all the cruel things you said to me yesterday? I shall never forget them as long as I live. And now, when I ask you to come out with me–it is such a little thing-oh, I can’t sit at home this evening, Eugen, I can’t do it! If you really loved me, you would understand.”

She flung herself across the bed and sobbed despairingly. Schilsky, who had again made believe during this outburst to be absorbed in his work, cast a look of mingled anger and discomfort at the prostrate figure, and for some few moments, succeeded in continuing his occupation with a show of indifference; but as, in place of abating, her sobs grew more heart-rending, his own face began to twitch, and finally he dropped pencil and cigarette, and with a loud expression of annoyance went over to the bed.

“Lulu,” he said persuasively. “Come, Lulu,” and bending over her, he laid his hands on her shoulders and tried to force her to rise. She resisted him with all her might, but he was the stronger, and presently he had her on her feet, where, with her head on his shoulder, she wept out the rest of her tears. He held her to him, and although his face above her was still dark, did what he could to soothe her. He could never bear, to see or to hear a woman cry, and this loud passionate weeping, so careless of anything but itself, racked his nerves, and filled him with an uneasy wrath against invisible powers.

“Don’t cry, darling, don’t cry!” he said again and again. Gradually she grew calmer, and he, too, was still; but when her sobs were hushed, and she was clinging to him in silence, he put his hands on her shoulders and held her back from him, that he might look at her. His face wore a stubborn expression, which she knew, and which made him appear years older than he was.

“Now listen to me, Lulu,” he said. “When you behave in this way again, you won’t see me afterwards for a week–I promise you that, and you know I keep my word. Instead of being glad that I am in the right mood and can get something done, you come here–which you know I have repeatedly forbidden you to do–and make a fool of yourself like this. I have explained everything to you. I could not possibly stay on Wednesday night–why didn’t you time your arrival better? But it’s just like you. You would throw the whole of one’s future into the balance for the sake of a whim. Yesterday I was in a beast of a temper–I’ve admitted it. But that was made all right last night; and no one but you would drag it up again.”

He spoke with a kind of dogged restraint, which only sometimes gave way, when the injustice she was guilty of forced itself upon him. “Now, like a good girl, go home–go to the theatre and enjoy yourself. I don’t mind you being happy without me. At least, go!–under any circumstances you ought not to be here. How often have I told you that!” His moderation swept over into the feverish irritation she knew so well how to kindle in him, and his lisp became so marked that he was almost unintelligible. “You won’t have a rag of reputation left.”

“If I don’t care, why should you?” She felt for his hand. But he turned his back. “I won’t have it, I tell you. You know what the student underneath said the last time he met you on the stair.”

She pressed her handkerchief to her lips to keep from bursting anew into sobs, and there was a brief silence–he stood at the window, gazing savagely at the opposite house-wall–before she said: “Don’t speak to me like that. I’m going–now–this moment. I will never do it again–never again.”

As he only mumbled disbelief at this, she put her arms round his neck, and raised her tear-stained face to his: her eyes were blurred and sunken with crying, and her lips were white. He knew every line of her face by heart; he had known it in so many moods, and under so many conditions, that he was not as sensitive to its influence as he had once been; and he stood unwilling, with his hands in his pockets, while she clung to him and let him feel her weight. But he was very fond of her, and, as she continued mutely to implore forgiveness–she, Lulu, his Lulu, whom every one envied him–his hasty anger once more subsided; he put his arms round her and kissed her. She nestled in against him, over-happy at his softening, and for some moments they stood like this, in the absolute physical agreement that always overcame their differences. In his arms, with her head on his shoulder, she smoothed back his hair; and while she gazed, with adoring eyes, at this face that constituted her world, she murmured words of endearment; and all the unsatisfactory day was annulled by these few moments of perfect harmony.

It was he who loosened his grasp. “Now, it’s all right, isn’t it? No more tears. But you really must be off, or you’ll be late.”

“Yes. And you?”

He had taken up his violin and was tuning it, preparatory to playing himself back into the mood she had dissipated. He ran his fingers up and down, tried flageolets, and slashed chords across the strings.

But when she had sponged her face and pinned on her hat, he said, in response to her beseeching eyes, which, as so often before, made the granting of this one request, a touchstone of his love for her: “Look here, Lulu, if I possibly can, I’ll drop in at the end of the first act. Look out for me then, in the FOYER.”

And with this, she was forced to be content.

IX.

When, shortly after five o’clock, Madeleine and Maurice arrived at the New Theatre, they took their places at the end of a queue which extended to the corner of the main building; and before they had stood very long, so many fresh people had been added to the line, that it had lengthened out until it all but reached the arch of the theatre-cafe. Dove was well to the fore, and would be one of the first to gain the box-office. A quarter of an hour had still to elapse before the doors opened; and Maurice borrowed his companion’s textbook, and read studiously, to acquaint himself with the plot of the opera. Madeleine took out Wolzogen’s FUHRER, with the intention of brushing up her knowledge of the motives; but, before she had finished a page, she had grown so interested in what two people behind her were saying that she turned and took part in the conversation.

The broad expanse of the AUGUSTUSPLATZ facing the theatre was bare and sunny. A policeman arrived, and ordered the queue in a straighter line; then he strolled up and down, stroking and smoothing his white gloves. More people came hurrying over the square to the theatre, and ranged themselves at the end of the tail. As the hands of the big clock on the post-office neared the quarter past five, a kind of tremor ran through the waiting line; it gathered itself more compactly together. One clock after another boomed the single stroke; sounds came from within the building; the burly policeman placed himself at the head of the line. There was a noise of drawn bolts and grating locks, and after a moment’s suspense, light shone out and the big door was flung open.

“Gent–ly!” shouted the policeman, but the leaders of the queue charged with a will, and about a dozen people had dashed forward, before he could throw down a stemming arm, on which those thus hindered leaned as on a bar of iron. Madeleine and Maurice were to the front of the second batch. And the arm down, in they flew also, Madeleine leading through the swing-doors at the side of the corridor, up the steep, wooden stairs, one flight after another, higher and higher, round and round, past one, two, three, tiers–a mad race, which ended almost in the arms of the gate-keeper at the topmost gallery.

Dove was waiting with the tickets, and they easily secured the desired places; not in the middle of the gallery, where, as Madeleine explained while she tucked her hat and jacket under the seat, the monstrous chandelier hid the greater part of the stage, but at the right-hand side, next the lattice that separated the seats at seventy-five from those at fifty pfennigs.

“This is first-rate for seeing,” said Maurice.

Madeleine laughed. “You see too much–that’s the trouble. Wait till you’ve watched the men running about the bottom of the Rhine, working the cages the Rhine-daughters swim in.”

As yet, with the exception of the gallery, the great building was empty. Now the iron fire-curtain rose; but the sunken well of the orchestra was in darkness, and the expanse of seats on the ground floor far below, was still encased in white wrappings–her and there an attendant began to peel them off. Maurice, poring over his book, had to strain his eyes to read, and this, added to the difficulty of the German, and his own sense of pleasurable excitement, made him soon give up the attempt, and attend wholly to what Madeleine was saying.

It was hot already, and the air of the crowded gallery was permeated with various, pungent odours: some people behind them were eating a strong-smelling sausage, and the man on the other side of the lattice reeked of cheap tobacco. When they had been in their seats for about a quarter of an hour, the lights throughout the theatre went up, and, directly afterwards, the lower tiers and the ground floor were sprinkled with figures. One by, one, the members of the orchestra dropped in,, turned up the lamps attached to their stands, and taking their instruments, commenced to tune and flourish; and soon stray motives and scraps of motives came mounting up, like lost birds, from wind and strings; the man of the drums beat a soft rattatoo, and applied his ear to the skins of his instruments. Now the players were in their seats, waiting for the conductor; late-comers in the audience entered with an air of guilty haste. The chief curtain had risen, and the stage was hidden only by stuff curtains, bordered with a runic scroll. A delightful sense of expectation pervaded the theatre.

Maurice had more than once looked furtively at his watch; and, at every fresh noise behind him, he turned his head–turned so often that the people in the back seats grew suspicious, and whispered to one another. Madeleine had drawn his attention to everything worth noticing; and now, with her opera-glass at her eyes, she pointed out to him people whom he ought to know. Dove, having eaten a ham-roll at the buffet on the stair, had ever since sat with his opera-glass glued to his face, and only at this moment did he remove it with a sigh of relief.

“There they are,” said Madeleine, and showed Maurice the place in the PARQUET, where Ephie and Johanna Cayhill were sitting. But the young man only glanced cursorily in the direction she indicated; he was wondering why Louise did not come–the time had all but gone. He could not bring himself to ask, partly from fear of being disappointed, partly because, now that he knew her, it was harder than before to bring her name over his lips. But the conductor had entered by the orchestra-door; he stood speaking to the first violinist, and the next moment would climb into his seat. The players held their instruments in readiness–and a question trembled on Maurice’s tongue. But at this very moment, a peremptory fanfare rang out behind the scene, and Madeleine said: “The sword motive, Maurice,” to add in the same breath: “There’s Louise.”

He looked behind him. “Where?”

She nudged him. “Not here, you silly,” she said in a loud whisper. “Surely you haven’t been expecting her to come up here? PARQUET, fourth row from the front, between two women in plaid dresses–oh, now the lights have gone.”

“Ssh!” said at least half a dozen people about them: her voice was audible above the growling of the thunder.

Maurice took her opera-glass, and, notwithstanding the darkness into which the theatre had been plunged, travelled his eyes up and down the row she named–naturally without success. When the curtains parted and disclosed the stage, it was a little lighter, but not light enough for him; he could not find the plaids; or rather there were only plaids in the row; and there was also more than one head that resembled hers. To know that she was there was enough to distract him; and he was conscious of the music and action of the opera merely as something that was going on outside him, until he received another sharp nudge from Madeleine on his righthand side.

“You’re not attending. And this is the only act you’ll be able to make anything of.”

He gave a guilty start, and turned to the stage, where Hunding had just entered to a pompous measure. In his endeavours to understand what followed, he was aided by his companions, who prompted him alternately. But Siegmund’s narration seemed endless, and his thoughts wandered in spite of himself.

“Listen to this,” said Dove of a sudden. “It’s one of the few songs Wagner has written.” He swayed his head from side to side, to the opening bars of the love-song; and Maurice found the rhythm so inviting that he began keeping time with his foot, to the indignation of a music-loving policeman behind them, who gave an angry: “Pst!”

“One of the finest love-scenes that was ever written,” whispered Madeleine in her decisive way. And Maurice believed her. From this point on, the music took him up and carried him with it; and when the great doors burst open, and let in the spring night, he applauded vigorously with the rest, keeping it up so long that Dove disappeared, and Madeleine grew impatient.

“Let us go. The interval is none too long.”

They went downstairs to the first floor of the building, and entered a long, broad, brilliantly lighted corridor. Here the majority of the audience was walking round and round, in a procession of twos and threes; groups of people also stood at both ends and looked on; others went in and out of the doors that opened on the great loggia. Madeleine and Maurice joined the perambulating throng, Madeleine bowing and smiling to her acquaintances, Maurice eagerly scanning the faces that came towards him on the opposite side.

Suddenly, a stout gentleman, in gold spectacles, kid gloves tight to bursting, and a brown frock coat, over the amplitude of which was slung an opera-glass, started up from a corner, and, seizing both Madeleine’s hands, worked them up and down. At the same time, he made a ceremonious little speech about the length of time that had elapsed since their last meeting, and paid her a specious compliment on the taste she displayed in being present at so serious an opera. Madeleine laughed, and said a few words in her hard, facile German: the best was yet to come; “DIE MORAN” was divine as Brunnhilde. Having bowed and said: “Lohse” to Maurice, the stranger took no further notice of him, but, drawing Madeleine’s hand through his arm, in a manner half gallant, half paternal, invited her to take ices with him, at the adjoining buffet.

Maurice remained standing in a corner, scrutinising those who passed him. He exchanged a few words with one of his companions of the dinner-table–a small-bodied, big-headed chemical student called Dickensey, who had a reputation for his cynicism. He had just asked Maurice whether Siegmund reminded him more of a pork-butcher or a prizefighter, and had offered to lay a bet that he would never attend a performance in this theatre when the doors of Hunding’s house flew open, or the sword lit up, at exactly the right moment–when Maurice caught sight of Dove and the Cayhills. He excused himself, and went to join them.

Not one of the three looked happy. Johanna was unspeakably bored and did not conceal it; she gazed with contempt on the noisy, excited crowd. Dove was not only burning to devote himself to Ephie; he had also got himself into a dilemma, and was at this moment doing his best to explain the first act of the opera to Johanna, without touching on the relationship of the lovers. His face was red with the effort, and he hailed Maurice’s appearance as a welcome diversion. But Ephie, too, greeted him with pleasure, and touching his arm, drew him back, so that they dropped behind the others. She was coquettishly dressed this evening, and looked so charming that people drew one another’s attention to DIE REIZENDE KLEINE ENGLADNDERIN. But Maurice soon discovered that she was out of spirits, and disposed to be cross. For fear lest he was the offender, he asked if she had quite forgiven him, and if they were good friends again. “Oh, I had forgotten all about it!” But, a moment after, she was grave and quiet–altogether unlike herself.

“Are you not enjoying yourself, Ephie?”

“No, I’m not. I think it’s stupid. And they’re all so fat.”

This referred to the singers, and was indisputable; Maurice could only agree with her, and try to rally her. Meanwhile, he continued surreptitiously to scour the hall, with an evergrowing sense of disappointment.

Then, suddenly, among those who were passing in the opposite direction, he saw Louise. In a flash he understood why he had not been able to find her in the row of seats: he had looked for her in a black dress, and she was all in white, with heavy white lace at her neck. Her companion was an Englishman called Eggis, of whom it was rumoured that he had found it advisable abruptly to leave his native land: here, he made a precarious living by journalism, and by doing odd jobs for the consulate. In spite of his shabby clothes, this man, prematurely bald, with dissipated features, had polished manners and an air of refinement; and, thoroughly enjoying his position, he was talking to his companion with vivacity. It was plain that Louise was only half listening to him; with a faint, absent smile on her lips, she, too, restlessly scanned the crowd.

They all caught sight of Schilsky at the same moment, and Maurice, on whom nothing was lost, saw as well the quick look that passed between Louise and him, and its immediate effect: Louise flashed into a smile, and was full of gracious attentiveness to the little man at her side.

Schilsky leant against the wall, with his hands in his pockets, his conspicuous head well back. On entering the FOYER, he had been pounced on by Miss Jensen. The latter, showily dressed in a large-striped stuff, had in tow a fellow-singer about half her own size, whom she was rarely to be seen without; but, on this occasion, the wan little American stood disconsolately apart, for Miss Jensen was paying no attention to him. In common with the rest of her sex, she had a weakness for Schilsky; and besides, on this evening, she needed specially receptive ears, for she had been studying the role of Sieglinde, and was full of criticisms and objections. As Ephie and Maurice passed them, she nodded to the latter and said: “Good evening, neighbour!” while Schilsky, seizing the chance, broke away, without troubling to excuse himself. Thus deserted, Miss Jensen detained Maurice, and so he lost the couple he wanted to keep in sight. But at the first pause in the conversation, Ephie plucked at his sleeve.

“Let us go out on the balcony.”

They went outside on the loggia, where groups of people stood refreshing themselves in the mild evening air, which was pleasant with the scent of lilac. Ephie led the way, and Maurice followed her to the edge of the parapet, where they leaned against one of the pillars. Here, he found himself again in the neighbourhood of the other two. Louise, leaning both hands on the stone-work, was looking out over the square; but Schilsky, lounging as before, with his legs crossed, his hands in his pockets, had his back to it, and was letting his eyes range indifferently over the faces before him. As Maurice and Ephie came up, he yawned long and heartily, and, in so doing, showed all his defective teeth. Furtively watching them, Maurice saw him lean towards his companion and say something to her; at the same time, he touched with his fingertips the lace she wore at the front of her dress. The familiarity of the action grated on Maurice, and he turned away his head. When he looked again, a moment or two later, he was disturbed anew. Louise was leaning forward, still in the same position, but Schilsky was plainly conversing by means of signs with some one else. He frowned, half closed his eyes, shook his head, and, as if by chance, laid a finger on his lips.

“Who’s he doing that to?” Maurice asked himself, and followed the direction of the other’s eyes, which were fixed on the corner where he and Ephie stood. He turned, and looked from side to side; and, as he did this, he caught a glimpse of Ephie’s face, which made him observe her more nearly: it was flushed, and she was gazing hard at Schilsky. With a rush of enlightenment, Maurice looked back at the young man, but this time Schilsky saw that he was being watched; stooping, he said a nonchalant word to his companion, and thereupon they went indoors again. All this passed like a flash, but it left, none the less, a disagreeable impression, and before Maurice had recovered from it, Ephie said: “Let us go in.”

They pressed towards the door.

“I’m poor company to-night, Ephie,” he said, feeling already the need of apologising to her for his ridiculous suspicion. “But you are quiet, too.” He glanced down at her as he spoke, and again was startled; her expression was set and defiant, but her baby lips trembled. “What’s the matter? I believe you are angry with me for being so silent.”

“I guess it doesn’t make any difference to me whether you talk or not,” she replied pettishly. “But I think it’s just as dull and stupid as it can be. I wish I hadn’t come.”

“Would you like to go home?”

“Of course I wouldn’t. I’ll stop now I’m here–oh, can’t we go quicker? How slow you are! Do make haste.”

He thought he heard tears in her voice, and looked at her in perplexity. While he contemplated getting her into a quiet corner and making her tell him truthfully what the matter was, they came upon Madeleine, who had been searching everywhere for Maurice. Madeleine had more colour in her cheeks than usual, and, in the pleasing consciousness that she was having a successful evening, she brought her good spirits to bear on Ephie, who stood fidgeting beside them.

“You look nice, child,” she remarked in her patronising way. “Your dress is very pretty. But why is your face so red? One would think you had been crying.”

Ephie, growing still redder, tossed her head. “It’s no wonder, I’m sure. The theatre is as hot as an oven. But at least my nose isn’t red as well.”

Madeleine was on the point of retorting, but at this moment, the interval came to an end, and the electric bells rang shrilly. The people who were nearest the doors went out at once, upstairs and down. Among the first were Louise and Schilsky, the latter’s head as usual visible above every one else’s.

“I will go, too,” said Ephie hurriedly. “No, don’t bother to come with me. I’ll find my way all right. I guess the others are in front.”

“There’s something wrong with that child to-night,” said Madeleine as she and Maurice climbed to the gallery. “Pert little thing! But I suppose even such sparrow-brains have their troubles.”

“I suppose they have,” said Maurice. He had just realised that the longed-for interval was over, and with it more of the hopes he had nursed.

Dove was already in his seat, eating another roll. He moved along to make room for them, but not a word was to be got out of him, and as soon as he had finished eating, he raised the opera-glass to his eyes again. Behind his back, Madeleine whispered a mischievous remark to Maurice, but the latter smiled wintrily in return. He had searched swiftly and thoroughly up and down the fourth row of the PARQUET, only to find that Louise was not in it. This time there could be no doubt whatever; not a single white dress was in the row, and towards the middle a seat was vacant. They had gone home then; he would not see her again–and once more the provoking darkness enveloped the theatre.

This second act had no meaning for him, and he found the various scenes intolerably long. Dove volunteered no further aid, and Madeleine’s explanations were insufficient; he was perplexed and bored, and when the curtains fell, joined in the applause merely to save appearances. The others rose, but he said he would not go downstairs; and when they had drawn back to let Dove push by and hurry away, Madeleine said she, too, would stay. However they would at least go into the corridor, where the air was better. After they had promenaded several times up and down, they descended to a lower floor and there, through a little half-moon window that gave on the FOYER below, they watched the living stream which, underneath, was going round as before. Madeleine talked without a pause.

“Look at Dove!” She pointed him out as he went by with the two sisters. “Did you ever see such a gloomy air? He might sit for Werther to-night. And oh, look, there’s Boehmer with his widow–see, the pretty fattish little woman. She’s over forty and has buried two husbands, but is crazy about Boehmer. They say she’s going to marry him, though he’s more than twenty years younger than she is.”

At this juncture, to his astonishment, Maurice saw Schilsky and Louise. He uttered an involuntary exclamation, and Madeleine understood it. She stopped her gossip to say: “You thought she had gone, didn’t you? Probably she has only changed her seat. They do that sometimes–he hates PARQUET.” And, after a pause: “How cross she looks! She’s evidently in a temper about something. I never saw people hide their feelings as badly as they do. It’s positively indecent.”

Her strictures were justifiable; as long as the two below were in sight, and as often as they came round, they did not exchange word or look with each other. Schilsky frowned sulkily, and his loose-knitted body seemed to hang together more loosely than usual, while as for Louise–Maurice staring hard from his point of vantage could not have believed it possible for her face to change in this way. She looked suddenly older, and very tired; and her mobile mouth was hard.

When, an hour later, after a tedious colloquy between Brunnhilde and Wotan, this long and disappointing evening came to an end, to the more human strains of the FEUERZAUBER, and they, the last of the gallery-audience to leave, had tramped down the wooden stairs, Maurice’s heart leapt to his throat to discover, as they turned the last bend, not only the two Cayhills waiting for them, but also, a little distance further off, Louise. She stood there, in her white dress, with a thin scarf over her head.

Madeleine was surprised too. “Louise! Is it you? And alone?”

The girl did not respond. “I want to borrow some money from you, Madeleine–about five or six marks,” she said, without smiling, in one of those colourless voices that preclude further questioning.

Madeleine was not sure if she had more than a couple of marks in her purse, and confirmed this on looking through it under a lamp; but both young men put their hands in their pockets, and the required sum was made up. As they walked across the square, Louise explained. Dressed, and ready to start for the theatre, she had not been able to find her purse.

“I looked everywhere. And yet I had it only this morning. At the last moment, I came down here to Markwald’s. He knows me; and he let me have the seats on trust. I said I would go in afterwards.”

They waited outside the tobacconist’s, while she settled her debt. Before she came out again, Madeleine cast her eyes over the group, and, having made a rapid surmise, said good-naturedly to Johanna: “Well, I suppose we shall walk together as far as we can. Shall you and I lead off?”

Maurice had a sudden vision of bliss; but no sooner had Louise appeared again, with the shopman bowing behind her, then Ephie came round to his side, with a naive, matter-of-course air that admitted of no rebuff, and asked him to carry her opera-glass. Dove and Louise brought up the rear.

But Dove had only one thought: to be in Maurice’s place. Ephie had behaved so strangely in the theatre; he had certainly done something to offend her, and, although he had more than once gone over his conduct of the past week, without finding any want of correctness on his part, whatever it was, he must make it good without delay.

“You know my friend Guest, I think,” he said at last, having racked his brains to no better result–not for the world would he have had his companion suspect his anxiety to leave her. “He’s a clever fellow, a very clever fellow. Schwarz thinks a great deal of him. I wonder what his impressions of the opera were. This was his first experience of Wagner; it would be interesting to hear what he has to say.”

Louise was moody and preoccupied, but Dove’s words made her smile.

“Let us ask him,” she said.

They quickened their steps and overtook the others. And when Dove, without further ado, had marched round to Ephie’s side, Louise, left slightly to herself, called Maurice back to her.

“Mr. Guest, we want your opinion of the WALKURE.”

Confused to find her suddenly beside him, Maurice was still more disconcerted at the marked way in which she slackened her pace to let the other two get in front. Believing, too, that he heard a note of mockery in her voice, he coloured and hesitated. Only a moment ago he had had several things worth saying on his tongue; now they would not out. He stammered a few words, and broke down in them half-way. She said nothing, and after one of the most embarrassing pauses he had ever experienced, he avowed in a burst of forlorn courage: “To tell the truth, I did not hear much of the music.”

But Louise, who had merely exchanged one chance companion for another, did not ask the reason, or display any interest in his confession, and they went on in silence. Maurice looked stealthily at her: her white scarf had slipped back and her wavy head was bare. She had not heard what he said, he told himself; her thoughts had nothing to do with him. But as he stole glances at her thus, unreproved, he wakened to a sudden consciousness of what was happening to him: here and now, after long weeks of waiting, he was walking at her side; he knew her, was alone with her, in the summer darkness, and, though a cold hand gripped his throat at the thought, he took the resolve not to let this moment pass him by, empty-handed. He must say something that would rouse her to the fact of his existence; something that would linger in her mind, and make her remember him when he was not there. But they were half way down the GRIMMAISCHESTRASSE; at the end, where the PETERSTRASSE crossed it, Dove and the Cayhills would branch off, and Madeleine return to them. He had no time to choose his phrases.

“When I was introduced to you this afternoon, Miss Dufrayer, you did not know who I was,” he said bluntly. “But I knew you very well–by sight, I mean, of course. I have seen you often–very often.”

He had done what he had hoped to do, had arrested her attention. She turned and considered him, struck by the tone in which he spoke.

“The first time I saw you,” continued Maurice, with the same show of boldness–“you, of course, will not remember it. It was one evening in Schwarz’s room–in April–months ago. And since then, I . . . well . . . I—-“

She was gazing at him now, in surprise. She remembered at this minute, how once before, that day, his manner of saying some simple thing had affected her disagreeably. Then, she had eluded the matter with an indifferent word; now, she was not in a mood to do this, or in a mood to show leniency. She was dispirited, at war with herself, and she welcomed the excuse to vent her own bitterness on another.

“And since then–well?”

“Since then . . . “He hesitated, and gave a nervous laugh at his own daring. “Since then . . . well, I have thought about you more than–than is good for my peace of mind.”

For a moment amazement kept her silent; then she, too, laughed, and the walls of the dark houses they were passing seemed to the young man to re-echo the sound.

“Your peace of mind!”

She repeated the words after him, with such an ironical emphasis that his unreflected courage curled and shrivelled. He wished the ground had swallowed him up before he had said them. For, as they fell from her lips, the audacity he had been guilty of, and the absurdity that was latent in the words themselves, struck him in the face like pellets of hail.

“Your peace of mind! What has your peace of mind to do with me?” she cried, growing extravagantly angry. “I never saw you in my life till to-day; I may never see you again, and it is all the same to me whether I do or not.–Oh, my own peace of mind, as you call it, is quite hard enough to take care of, without having a stranger’s thrown at me! What do you mean by making me responsible for it! I have never done anything to you.”

All the foolish castles Maurice had built came tumbling about his cars. He grew pale and did not venture to look at her.

“Make you responsible! Oh, how can you misunderstand me so cruelly!”

His consternation was so palpable that it touched her in spite of herself. Her face had been as naively miserable as a child’s, now it softened, and she spoke more kindly.

“Don’t mind what I say. To-night I am tired . . . have a headache . . . anything you like.”

A wave of compassion drowned his petty feelings of injury, and his sympathy found vent in a few inadequate words.

“Help me?–you?” She laughed, in an unhappy way. “To help, one must understand, and you couldn’t understand though you tried. All you others lead such quiet lives; you know nothing of what goes on in a life like mine. Every day I ask myself why I have not thrown myself out of the window, or over one of the bridges into the river, and put an end to it.”

Wrapped up though she was in herself, she could not help smiling at his frank gesture of dismay.

“Don’t be afraid,” she said, and the smile lingered on her lips. “I shall never do it. I’m too fond of life, and too afraid of death. But at least,” she caught herself up again, “you will see how ridiculous it is for you to talk to me of your peace of mind. Peace of mind! I have never even been passably content. Something is always wanting. To-night, for instance, I feel so much energy in me, and I can make nothing of it–nothing! If I were a man, I should walk for hours, bareheaded, through the woods. But to be a woman . . . to be cooped up inside four walls . . . when the night itself is not large enough to hold it all!—-“

She threw out her hands to emphasise her helplessness, then let them drop to her sides again. There was a silence, for Maurice could not think of anything to say; her fluency made him tongue-tied. He struggled with his embarrassment until they were all but within earshot of the rest, at the bottom of the street.

“If I . . . if you would let me . . . There is nothing in the world I wouldn’t do to help you,” he ended fervently.

She did not reply; they had reached the corner where the others waited. There was a general leave-taking. Through a kind of mist, Maurice saw that Ephie’s face still wore a hostile look; and she hardly moved her lips when she bade him good-night.

Madeleine drew her own conclusions as she walked the rest of the way home between two pale and silent people. She had seen, on coming out of the theatre, that Louise was in one of her bad moods–a fact easily to be accounted for by Schilsky’s absence. Maurice had evidently been made to suffer under it, too, for not a syllable was to be drawn from him, and, after several unavailing attempts she let him alone.

As they crossed the ROSSPLATZ, which lay wide and deserted in the starlight, Louise said abruptly: “Suppose, instead of going home, we walk to Connewitz?”

At this proposal, and at Maurice’s seconding of it, Madeleine laughed with healthy derision.

“That is just like one of your crazy notions,” she said “What a creature you are! For my part, I decline with thanks. I have to get a Moscheles ETUDE ready by to-morrow afternoon, and need all my wits. But don’t let me hinder you. Walk to Grimma if you want to.”

“What do you say? Shall you and I go on?” Louise turned to Maurice; and the young man did not know whether she spoke in jest or in earnest.

Madeleine knew her better. “Louise!” she said warningly. “Maurice has work to do to-morrow, too.”

“You thought I meant it,” said the girl, and laughed so ungovernably that Madeleine was again driven to remonstrance.

“For goodness’ sake, be quiet! We shall have a policeman after us, if you laugh like that.”

Nothing more was said until they stood before the housedoor in the BRUDERSTRASSE. There Louise, who had lapsed once more into her former indifference, asked Madeleine to come upstairs with her.

“I will look for the purse again; and then I can give you what I owe you. Or else I am sure to forget. Oh, it’s still early; and the night is so long. No one can think of sleep yet.”

Madeleine was not a night-bird, but she was also not averse to having a debt paid. Louise looked from her to Maurice. “Will you come, too, Mr. Guest? It will only take a few minutes,” she said, and, seeing his unhappy face, and remembering what had passed between them, she spoke more gently than she had yet done.

Maurice felt that he ought to refuse; it was late. But Madeleine answered for him. “Of course. Come along, Maurice,” and he crossed the threshold behind them.

After lighting a taper, they entered a paved vestibule, and mounted a flight of broad and very shallow stairs; half-way up, there was a deep recess for pot-plants, and a wooden seat was attached to the wall. The house had been a fine one in its day; it was solidly built, had massive doors with heavy brass fittings, and thick mahogany banisters. On the first floor were two doors, a large and a small one, side by side. Louise unlocked the larger, and they stepped into a commodious lobby, off which several rooms opened. She led the way to the furthest of these, and entered in front of her companions.

Maurice, hesitating just inside the door, found himself close to a grand piano, which stood free on all sides, was open, and disorderly with music. It was a large room, with three windows; and one end of it was shut off by a high screen, which stretched almost from wall to wall. A deep sofa stood in an oriel-window; a writing-table was covered with bric-a-brac, and three tall flower-vases were filled with purple lilac. But there was a general air of untidiness about the room; for strewn over the chairs and tables were numerous small articles of dress and the toilet-hairpins, a veil, a hat and a skirt–all traces of her intimate presence.

As she lifted the lamp from the writing-table to place it on the square table before the sofa, Madeleine called her attention to a folded paper that had lain beneath it.

“It seems to be a letter for you.”

She caught at it with a kind of avidity, tore it open, and heedless of their presence, devoured it, not only with her eyes: but with her parted lips and eager hands. When she looked up again, her cheeks had a tinge of colour in them; her eyes shone like faceted jewels; her smile was radiant and infectious. With no regard for appearances, she buttoned the note in the bosom of her dress.

“Now we will look for the purse,” she said. “But come in, Mr. Guest–you are still standing at the door. I shall think you are offended with me. Oh, how hot the room is!–and the lilac is stifling. First the windows open! And then this scarf off, and some more light. You will help me to look, will you not?”

It was to Maurice she spoke, with a childlike upturning of her face to his–an irresistibly confiding gesture. She disappeared behind the screen, and came out bareheaded, nestling with both hands at the coil of hair on her neck. Then she lit two candles that stood on the piano in brass candlesticks, and Maurice lighted her round the room, while she searched in likely and unlikely places–inside the piano, in empty vases, in the folds of the curtains–laughing at herself as she did so, until Madeleine said that this was only nonsense, and came after them herself. When Maurice held the candle above the writing-table, he lighted three large photographs of Schilsky, one more dandified than the other; and he was obliged to raise his other hand to steady the candlestick.

At last, following a hint from Madeleine, they discovered the purse between the back of the sofa and the seat; and now Louise remembered that it had been in the pocket of her dressing-gown that afternoon.

“How stupid of me! I might have known,” she said contritely. “So many things have gone down there in their day. Once a silver hair-brush that I was fond of; and I sometimes look there when bangles or hat-pins are missing,” and letting her eyes dance at Maurice, she threw back her head and laughed.

Here, however, another difficulty arose; except for a few nickel coins, the purse was found to contain only gold, and the required change could not be made up.

“Never mind; take one of the twenty-mark pieces,” she urged. “Yes, Madeleine, I would rather you did;” and when Madeleine hinted that Maurice might not find it too troublesome to come back with the change the following day, she turned to the young man, and saying: “Yes, if Mr. Guest would be so kind,” smiled at him with such a gracious warmth that it was all he could do to reply with a decent unconcern.

But the hands of the clock on the writing-table were nearing half-past eleven, and now it was she who referred to the lateness of the hour.

“Thank you very much,” she said to Maurice on parting. “And you must forget the nonsense I talked this evening. I didn’t mean it–not a word of it.” She laughed and held out her hand. “I wouldn’t shake hands with you this afternoon, but now–if you will? For to-night I am not superstitious. Nothing bad will happen; I’m sure of that. And I am very much obliged to you–for everything. Good night.”

Only a few minutes back, he had been steeped in pity for her; now it seemed as if no one had less need of pity or sympathy than she. He was bewildered, and went home to pass alternately from a mood of rapture to one of jealous despair. And the latter was torturous, for, as they walked, Madeleine had let fall such a vile suspicion that he had parted from her in anger, calling as he went that if he believed what she said to be true, he would never put faith in a human being again.

In the light of the morning, of course, he knew that it was incredible, a mere phantasm born of the dark; and towards four o’clock that afternoon, he called at the BRUDERSTRASSE with the change. But Louise was not at home, and as he did not find her in on three successive days, he did not venture to return. He wrote his name on a card, and left this, together with the money, in an envelope.

X.

After parting from the rest, Dove and the two Cayhills continued their way in silence: they were in the shadow thrown by the steep vaulting of the THOMASKIRCHE, before a word was exchanged between them. Johanna had several times glanced inquiringly at her sister, but Ephie had turned away her head, so that only the outline of her cheek was visible, and as Dove had done exactly the same, Johanna could only conclude that the two had fallen out. It was something novel for her to be obliged to talk when Ephie was present, but it was impossible for them to walk the whole way home as mum as this, especially as Dove had already heaved more than one deep sigh.

So, as they turned into the PROMENADE, Johanna said with a jerk, and with an aggressiveness that she could not subdue: “Well, that is the first and the last time anyone shall persuade me to go to a so-called opera by Wagner.”

“Is not that just a little rash?” asked Dove. He smiled, unruffled, with a suggestion of patronage; but there was also a preoccupation in his manner, which showed that he was thinking of other things.

“You call that music,” said Johanna, although he had done nothing of the kind. “I call it noise. I am not musical myself, thank goodness, but at least I know a tune when I hear one.”

“If my opinion had been asked, I should certainly have suggested something lighter–LOHENGRIN OR TANNHAUSER, for instance,” said Dove.

“You would have done us a favour if you had,” replied Johanna; and she meant what she said, in more ways than one. She had been at a loss to account for Ephie’s sudden longing to hear DIE WALKURE, and had gone to the theatre against her will, simply because she never thwarted Ephie if she could avoid it. Now, after she had heard the opera, she felt aggrieved with Dove as well; as far as she had been able to gather from his vague explanations, from the bawling of the singers, and from subsequent events, the first act treated of relations so infamous that, by common consent, they are considered non-existent; and Johanna was of the opinion that, instead of being so ready to take tickets for them, Dove might have let drop a hint of the nature of the piece Ephie wished to see.

After this last remark of Johanna’s there was another lengthy pause. Then Dove, looking fondly at what he could see of Ephie’s cheek, said: “I am afraid Miss Ephie has not enjoyed it either; she is so quiet–so unlike herself.”

Ephie, who had been staring into the darkness, bit her lip: he was at it again. After the unfriendly way in which Maurice Guest had deserted her, and forced her into Dove’s company, Dove had worried her right down the GRIMMAISCHESTRASSE, to know what the matter was, and how he had offended her. She felt exasperated with every one, and if he began his worryings again, would have to vent her irritation somehow.

“Ephie has only herself to blame if she didn’t enjoy it; she was bent on going,” said Johanna, in the mildly didactic manner she invariably used towards her sister. “But I think she is only tired–or a little cross.”

“Oh, that is not likely,” Dove hastened to interpose.

“I am not cross, Joan,” said Ephie angrily. “And if it was my fault you had to come–I’ve enjoyed myself very much, and I shall go again, as often as I like. But I won’t be teased–I won’t indeed!”

This was the sharpest answer Johanna had ever received from Ephie. She looked at her in dismay, but made no response, for of nothing was Johanna more afraid than of losing the goodwill Ephie bore her. Mentally she put her sister’s pettishness down to the noise and heat of the theatre, and it was an additional reason for bearing Wagner and his music a grudge. Dove also made no further effort to converse connectedly, but his silence was of a conciliatory kind, and, as they advanced along the PROMENADE, he could not deny himself the pleasure of drawing the pretty, perverse child’s attention to the crossings, the ruts in the road, the best bits of pavement, with a: “Walk you here, Miss Ephie,” “Take care,” “Allow me,” himself meanwhile dancing from one side of the footpath to the other, until the young girl was almost distracted.

“I can see for myself, thank you. I have eyes in my head as well as anyone else,” she exclaimed at length; and to Johanna’s amazed: “Ephie!” she retorted: “Yes, Joan, you think no one has a right to be rude but yourself.”

Johanna was more hurt by these words than she would have confessed. She had hitherto believed that Ephie–affectionate, lazy little Ephie–accepted her individual peculiarities as an integral part of her nature: it had not occurred to her that Ephie might be standing aloof and considering her objectively–let alone mentally using such an unkind word as rudeness of her. But Ephie’s fit of ill-temper, for such it undoubtedly was, made Johanna see things differently; it hinted at unsuspected, cold scrutinies in the past, and implied a somewhat laming care of one’s words in the days to come, which would render it difficult ever again to be one’s perfectly natural self.

Had Johanna not been so occupied with her own feelings, she would have heard the near tears in Ephie’s voice; it was with the utmost difficulty that the girl kept them back, and at the house-door, she had vanished up the stairs long before Dove had finished saying good-night. In the corridor, she hesitated whether or no, according to custom, she should go to her mother’s room. Then she put a brave face on it, and opened the door.

“Here we are, mummy. Good night. I hope the evening wasn’t too long.”

Long?–on the contrary the hours had flown. Mrs. Cayhill, left to herself, had all the comfortable sensations of a tippler in the company of his bottle. She could forge ahead, undeterred by any sense of duty; she had not to interrupt herself to laugh at Ephie’s wit, nor was she troubled by Johanna’s cold eye–that eye which told more plainly than words, how her elder daughter regarded her self-indulgence. Propped up in bed on two pillows, she now laid down her book, and put out her hand to draw Ephie to her.

“Did you enjoy it, darling? Were you amused? But you will tell me all about it in the morning.”

“Yes, mother, in the morning. I am a little tired–but it was very sweet,” said Ephie bravely. “Good night.”

Mrs. Cayhill kissed her, and nodded in perfect contentment at the pretty little figure before her. Ephie was free to go. And at last she was in her own room–at last!

She hastily locked both doors, one leading to the passage and one to her sister’s room. A moment later, Johanna was at the latter, trying to open it.

“Ephie! What is the matter? Why have you locked the door? Open it at once, I insist upon it,” she cried anxiously, and as loudly as she dared, for fear of disturbing the other inmates of the house.

But Ephie begged hard not to be bothered; she had a bad headache, and only wanted to be quiet.

“Let me give you a powder,” urged her sister. “You are so excited–I am sure you are not well;” and when this, too, was refused: “You had nothing but some tea, child–you must be hungry. And they have left our supper on the table.”

No, she was not hungry, didn’t want any supper, and was very sleepy.

“Well, at least unlock your door,” begged Johanna, with visions of the dark practices which Ephie, the soul of candour, might be contemplating on the other side. “I will not come in, I promise you,” she added.

“Oh, all right,” said Ephie crossly. But as soon as she heard that Johanna had gone, she returned to the middle of the room without touching the door; and after standing undecided for a moment, as if not quite sure what was coming next, she sat down on a chair at the foot of the bed, and suddenly began to cry. The tears had been in waiting for so long that they flowed without effort, abundantly, rolling one over another down her cheeks; but she was careful not to make a sound; for, even when sobbing bitterly, she did not forget that at any moment Johanna might enter the adjoining room and overhear her. And then, what a fuss there would be! For Ephie was one of those fortunate people who always get what they want, and but rarely have occasion to cry. All her desires had moved low, near earth, and been easily fulfilled. Did she break her prettiest doll, a still prettier was forthcoming; did anything happen to cross wish or scheme of hers, half a dozen brains were at work to think out a compensation.

But now she wept in earnest, behind closed doors, for she had received an injury which no one could make good. And the more she thought of it, the more copiously her tears flowed. The evening had been one long tragedy of disappointment: her fevered anticipation beforehand, her early throbs of excitement in the theatre, her growing consternation as the evening advanced, her mortification at being slighted–a sensation which she experienced for the first time. Again and again she asked herself what she had done to be treated in this way. What had happened to change him?

She was sitting upright on her chair, letting the tears stream unchecked; her two hands lay upturned on her knee; in one of them was a diminutive lace handkerchief, rolled to a ball, with which now and then she dabbed away the hottest tears. The windows of the room were still open, the blinds undrawn, and the street-lamps threw a flickering mesh of light on the wall. In the glass that hung over the washstand, she saw her dim reflection: following an impulse, she dried her eyes, and, with trembling fingers, lighted two candles, one on each side of the mirror. By this uncertain light, she leant forward with both hands on the stand, and peered at herself with a new curiosity.

She was still just as she had come out of the theatre: a many-coloured silk scarf was twisted round her head, and the brilliant, dangling fringes, and the stray tendrils of hair that escaped, made a frame for the rounded oval of her face. And then her skin was so fine, her eyes were so bright, the straight lashes so black and so long!–she put her head back, looked at herself through half-closed lids, turned her face this way and that, even smiling, wet though her cheeks were, in order that she might see the even line of teeth, with their slightly notched edges. The smile was still on her lips when the tears welled up again, ran over, trickled down and dropped with a splash, she watching them, until a big, unexpected sob rose in her throat, and almost choked her. Yes, she was pretty–oh, very, very pretty! But it made what had happened all the harder to understand. How had he had the heart to treat her so cruelly?

She knelt down by the open window, and laid her head on the sill. The moon, a mere sharp line of silver, hung fine and slender, like a polished scimitar, above the dark mass of houses opposite. Turning her hot face up to it, she saw that it was new, and instantly felt a throb of relief that she had not caught her first glimpse of it through glass. She bowed her head to it, quickly, nine times running, and sent up a prayer to the deity of fortune that had its home there. Good luck!–the fulfilment of one’s wish! She wished in haste, with tight-closed eyes–and who knew but what, the very next day, her wish might come true! Tired with crying, above all, tired of the grief itself, she began more and more to let her thoughts stray to the morrow. And having once yielded to the allurements of hope, she even endeavoured to make the best of the past evening, telling herself that she had not been alone for a single instant; he had really had no chance of speaking to her. In the next breath, of course, she reminded herself that he might easily have made a chance, had he wished; and a healthier feeling of resentment stole over her. Rising from her cramped position, she shut the window. She resolved to show him that she was not a person who could be treated in this off-hand fashion; he should see that she was not to be trifled with.

But she played with her unhappiness a little longer, and even had an idea of throwing herself on the bed without undressing. She was very sleepy, though, and the desire to be between the cool, soft sheets was too strong to be withstood. She slipped out of her clothes, leaving them just where they fell on the floor, like round pools; and before she had finished plaiting her hair, she was stifling a hearty yawn. But in bed, when the light was out, she lay and stared before her.

“I am very, very unhappy. I shall not sleep a wink,” she said to herself, and sighed at the prospect of the night-watch.

But before five minutes had passed her closed hand relaxed, and lay open and innocent on the coverlet; her breath came regularly–she was fast asleep. The moon was visible for a time in the setting of the unshuttered window; and when she wakened next day, toward nine o’clock, the full morning sun was playing on the bed.

For several months prior to this, Ephie had worshipped Schilsky at a distance. The very first time she saw him play, he had made a profound impression on her: he looked so earnest and melancholy, so supremely indifferent to every one about him, as he stood with his head bent to his violin. Then, too, he had beautiful hands; and she did not know which she admired more, his auburn hair with the big hat set so jauntily on it, or the thrillingly impertinent way he had of staring at you–through half-closed eyes, with his head well back–in a manner at once daring and irresistible.

Having come through a period of low spirits, caused by an acute consciousness of her own littleness and inferiority, Ephie so far recovered her self-confidence that she was able to look at her divinity when she met him; and soon after this, she made the intoxicating discovery that not only did he return her look, but that he also took notice of her, and deliberately singled her out with his gaze. And the belief was pardonable on Ephie’s part, for Schilsky made it a point of honour to stare any pretty girl into confusion; besides which, he had a habit of falling into sheep-like reveries, in which he saw no more of what or whom he looked at, than do the glassy eyes of the blind. More than once, Ephie had blushed and writhed in blissful torture under these stonily staring eyes.

From this to persuading herself that her feelings were returned was only a step. Events and details, lighter than puff-balls, were to her links of iron, which formed a wonderful chain of evidence. She went about nursing the idea that Schilsky desired an introduction as much as she did; that he was suffering from a romantic and melancholy attachment, which forbade him attempting to approach her.

At this date, she became an adept at inventing excuses to go to the Conservatorium when she thought he was likely to be there; and, suddenly grown rebellious, she shook off Johanna’s protectorship, which until now had weighed lightly on her. She grew fastidious about her dress, studied before the glass which colours suited her best, and the effect of a particular bow or ribbon; while on the days she had her violin-lessons, she developed a coquetry which made nothing seem good enough to wear, and was the despair of Johanna. When Schilsky played at an ABENDUNTERHALTUNG, she sat in the front row of seats, and made her hands ache with applauding. Afterwards she lay wakeful, with hot cheeks, and dreamt extravagant dreams of sending him great baskets and bouquets of flowers, with coloured streamers to them, such as the singers in the opera received on a gala night. And though no name was given, he would know from whom they came. But on the only occasion she tried to carry out the scheme, and ventured inside a florist’s shop, her scant command of German, and the excessive circumstantiality of the matter, made her feel so uncomfortable that she had fled precipitately, leaving the shopman staring after her in surprise.

Things were at this pass when, one day late in May, Ephie went as usual to take her lesson. It was two o’clock on a cloudless afternoon, and so warm that the budding lilac in squares and gardens began to give out fragrance. In the whitewashed, many-windowed corridors of the Conservatorium, the light was harsh and shadowless; it jarred on one, wounded the nerves. So at least thought Schilsky, who was hanging about the top storey of the building, in extreme ill-humour. He had been forced to make an appointment with a man to whom he owed money; the latter had not yet appeared, and Schilsky lounged and swore, with his two hands deep in his pockets, and his sulkiest expression. But gradually, he found himself listening to the discordant tones of a violin–at first unconsciously, as we listen when our thoughts are elsewhere engaged, then more and more intently. In one of the junior masters’ rooms, some one had begun to play scales in the third position, uncertainly, with shrill feebleness, seeking out each note, only to produce it falsely. As this scraping worked on him, Schilsky could not refrain from rubbing his teeth together, and screwing up his face as though he had toothache; now that the miserable little tones had successfully penetrated his ear, they hit him like so many blows.

“Damn him for a fool!” he said savagely to himself, and found an outlet for his irritation in repeating these words aloud. Then, however, as an ETUDE was commenced, with an impotence that struck him as purely vicious, he could endure the torment no longer. He had seen in the BUREAU the particular master, and knew that the latter had not yet come upstairs. Going to the room from which the sounds issued, he stealthily opened the door.

A girl was standing with her back to him, and was so engrossed in playing that she did not hear him enter. On seeing this, he proposed to himself the schoolboy pleasure of creeping up behind her and giving her a well-deserved fright. He did so, with such effect that, had he not caught it, her violin would have fallen to the floor.

He took both her wrists in his, held them firm, and, from his superior height–he was head and shoulders taller than Ephie –looked down on the miscreant. He recognised her now as a pretty little American whom he had noticed from time to time about the building; but–but . . . well, that she was as astoundingly pretty as this, he had had no notion. His eyes strayed over her face, picking out all its beauties, and he felt himself growing as soft as butter. Besides, she had crimsoned down to her bare, dimpled neck; her head drooped; her long lashes covered her eyes, and a tremulous smile touched the corners of her mouth, which seemed uncertain whether to laugh or to cry–the short, upper-lip trembled. He felt from her wrists, and saw from the uneasy movement of her breast, how wildly her heart was beating–it was as if one held a bird in one’s hand. His ferocity died away; none of the hard words he had had ready crossed his lips; all he said, and in his gentlest voice, was: “Have I frightened you?” He was desperately curious to know the colour of her eyes, and, as she neither answered him nor looked up, but only grew more and more confused, he let one of her hands fall, and taking her by the chin, turned her face up to his. She was forced to look at him for a moment. Upon which, he stooped and kissed her on the mouth, three times, with a pause between each kiss. Then, at a noise in the corridor, he swung hastily from the room, and was just in time to avoid the master, against whom he brushed up in going out of the door.

Herr Becker looked suspiciously at his favourite pupil’s tell-tale face and air of extreme confusion; and, throughout the lesson, his manner to her was so cold and short that Ephie played worse than ever before. After sticking fast in the middle of a passage, she stopped altogether, and begged to be allowed to go home. When she had gone, and some one else was playing, Herr Becker stood at the window and shook his head: round this innocent baby face he had woven several pretty fancies.

Meanwhile Ephie flew rather than walked home, and having reached her room unseen, flung herself on the bed, and buried her burning cheeks in the white coolness of the pillows. Johanna, finding her thus, a short time after, was alarmed, put questions of various kinds, felt sure the sun had been too hot for her, and finally stood over the bed, holding her unfailing remedy, a soothing powder for the nerves.

“Oh, do for goodness’ sake, leave me alone, Joan,” said Ephie. “I don’t want your powders. I am all right. Just let me be.”

She drank the mixture, however, and catching sight of Johanna’s anxious face, and aware that she had been cross, she threw her arms round her sister, hugged her, and called her a “dear old darling Joan.” But there was something in the stormy tenderness of the embrace, in the flushed cheeks and glittering eyes that made Johanna even more uneasy. She insisted upon Ephie lying still and trying to sleep; and, after taking off her shoes for her, and noiselessly drawing down the blinds, she went on tiptoe out of the room.

Ephie burrowed more deeply in her pillow, and putting both hands to her cars, to shut out the world, went over the details of what had happened. It was like a fairy-story. She walked lazily down the sunny corridor, entered the class-room, and took off her hat, which Herr Becker hung up for her, after having playfully examined it. She had just taken her violin from its case, when he remembered something he had to do in the BUREAU, and went out of the room, bidding her practise her scales during his absence; she heard again and smiled at the funny accent with which he said: “Just a moment.” She saw the bare walls of the room, the dust that lay white on the lid on the piano, was conscious of the difficulties of C sharp minor. She even knew the very note at which HE had been beside her–without a word of warning, as suddenly as though he had sprung from the earth. She heard the cry she had given, and felt his hands–the hands she had so often admired–clasp her wrists. He was so close to her that she felt his breath, and knew the exact shape of the diamond ring he wore on his little finger. She felt, too, rather than saw the audacious admiration of his eyes; and his voice was not the less caressing because a little thick. And then–then–she burrowed more firmly, held her ears more tightly to, laughed a happy, gurgling laugh that almost choked her: never, as long as she lived, would she forget the feel of his moustache as it scratched her lips!

When she rose and looked at herself in the glass, it seemed extraordinary that there should be no outward difference in her; and for several days she did not lose this sensation of being mysteriously changed. She was quieter than usual, and her movements were a little languid, but a kind of subdued radiance peeped through and shone in her eyes. She waited confidently for something to happen: she did not herself know what it would be, but, after the miracle that had occurred, it was beyond belief that things could jog on in their old familiar course; and so she waited and expected–at every letter the postman brought, each time the door-bell rang, whenever she went into the street.

But after a week had dragged itself to an end, and she had not even seen Schilsky again, she grew restless and unsure; and sometimes at night, when Johanna thought she was asleep, she would stand at her window, and, with a very different face from that which she wore by day, put countless questions to herself, all of which began with why and how. And Johanna was again beset by the fear that Ephie was sickening for an illness, for the child would pass from bursts of rather forced gaiety to fits of real fretfulness, or sink into brown studies, from which she wakened with a start. But if, on some such occasion, Johanna said to her: “Where ARE your thoughts, Ephie?” she would only laugh, and answer, with a hug: “Wool-gathering, you dear old bumble-bee!”

From the lesson following the eventful one, Ephie played truant, on the ground of headache, partly because her fancy pictured him lying in wait like an ogre to eat her up, and partly from a poor little foolish fear lest he should think her too easily won. Now, however, she blamed herself for not having given him an opportunity to speak to her, and began to frequent the Conservatorium assiduously. When, after ten long days, she saw him again, an unfailing instinct guided her aright.

It was in the vestibule, as she was leaving the building, and they met face to face. Directly she espied him, though her heart thumped alarmingly, Ephie tossed her head, gazed fixedly at some distant object, and was altogether as haughty as her parted lips would allow of. And she played her part so well that Schilsky’s attention was arrested; he remembered who she was, and stared hard at her as she passed. Not only this, but pleased, he could not have told why, he turned and followed her out, and standing on the steps, looked after her. She went down the street with her head in the air, holding her dress very high to display a lace-befrilled petticoat, and clattering gracefully on two high-heeled, pointed shoes. He screwed up his eyes against the sun, in order to see her better–he was short-sighted, too, but vanity forbade him to wear glasses–and when, at the corner of the street, Ephie rather spoilt the effect of her behaviour by throwing a hasty glance back, he laughed and clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

“VERDAMMT!” he said with expression.

And both on that day and the next, when he admired a well-turned ankle or a pretty petticoat, he was reminded of the provoking little American, with the tossed head and baby mouth.

A few days later, in the street that ran alongside the Gewandhaus, he saw her again.

Ephie, who, in the interval, had upbraided herself incessantly, was none the less, now the moment had come, about to pass as before–even more frigidly. But this time Schilsky raised his hat, with a tentative smile, and, in order not to appear childish, she bowed ever so slightly. When he was safely past, she could not resist giving a furtive look behind her, and at precisely the same moment, he turned, too. In spite of her trouble, Ephic found the coincidence droll; she tittered, and he saw it, although she immediately laid the back of her hand on her lips. It was not in him to let this pass unnoticed. With a few quick steps, he was at her side.

He took off his hat again, and looked at her not quite sure how to begin.

“I am happy to see you have not forgotten me,” he said in excellent English.

Ephie had impulsively stopped on hearing him come up with her, and now, colouring deeply, tried to dig a hole in the pavement with the toe of her shoe. She, too, could not think what to say; and this, together with the effect produced on her by his peculiar lisp, made her feel very uncomfortable. She was painfully conscious of his insistent eyes on her face, as he waited for her to speak; but there was a distressing pause before he added: “And sorry to see you are still angry with me.”

At this, she found her tongue. Looking, not at him, but at a passer-by on the opposite side of the street, she said: “Why, I guess I have a right to be.”

She tried to speak severely, but her voice quavered, and once more the young man was not sure whether the trembling of her lip signified tears or laughter.

“Are you always so cruel?” he asked, with an intentness that made her eyes seek the ground again. “Such a little crime! Is there no hope for me?”

She attempted to be dignified. “Little! I am really not accustomed—-“

“Then I’m not to be forgiven?”

His tone was so humble that suddenly she had to laugh. Shooting a quick glance at him, she said:

“That depends on how you behave in future. If you promise never to—-“

Before the words were well out of her mouth, she was aware of her stupidity; her laugh ended, and she grew redder than before. Schilsky had laughed, too, quite frankly, and he continued to smile at the confusion she had fallen into. It seemed a long time before he said with emphasis: “That is the last thing in the world you should ask of me.”

Ephie drooped her head, and dug with her shoe again; she had never been so tongue-tied as to-day, just when she felt she ought to say something very cold and decisive. But not an idea presented itself, and meanwhile he went on: “The punishment would be too hard. The temptation was so great.”

As she was still obstinately silent, he stooped and peeped under the overhanging brim of her hat. “Such pretty lips!” he said, and then, as on the former occasion, he took her by the chin and turned her face up to his.

But she drew back angrily. “Mr. Schilskyl . . . how dare you! Take your hand away at once.”

“There!–I have sinned again,” he said, and folded his hands in mock supplication. “Now I am afraid you will never forgive me.–But listen, you have the advantage of me; you know my name. Will you not tell me yours?”

Having retreated a full yard from him, Ephie regained some of her native self-composure. For the first time, she found herself able to look straight at him. “No,” she said, with a touch of her usual lightness. “I shall leave you to find it out for yourself; it will give you something to do.”

They both laughed. “At least give me your hand,” he said; and when he held it in his, he would not let her go, until, after much seeming reluctance on her part, she had detailed to him the days and hours of her lessons at the Conservatorium, and where he would be likely to meet her. As before, he stood and watched her go down the street, hoping that she would turn at the corner. But, on this day, Ephie whisked along in a great hurry.

On after occasions, he waylaid her as she came and went, and either stood talking to her, or walked the length of the street beside her. At the early hour of the afternoon when Ephie had her lessons, he did not need to fear being seen by acquaintances; the sunshine was undisturbed in the quiet street. The second time they met, he told her that he had found out what her name was; and his efforts to pronounce it afforded Ephie much amusement. Their conversation was always of the same nature, half banter, half earnest. Ephie, who had rapidly recovered her assurance, invariably began in her archest manner, and it became his special pleasure to reduce her, little by little, to a crimson silence.

But one day, about a fortnight later, she came upon him at a different hour, when he was not expecting to see her. He was strolling up and down in front of the Conservatorium, waiting for Louise, who might appear at any moment. Ephie had been restless all the morning, and had finally made an excuse to go out: her steps naturally carried her to the Conservatorium, where she proposed to study the notice-board, on the chance of seeing Schilsky. When she caught sight of him, her eyes brightened; she greeted him with an inviting smile, and a saucy remark. But Schilsky did not take up her tone; he cut her words short.

“What are you doing here to-day?” he asked with a frown of displeasure, meanwhile keeping a watchful eye on the inner staircase–visible through the glass doors–down which Louise would come. “I haven’t a moment to spare.”

Mortally offended by his manner, Ephie drew back her extended hand, and giving him a look of surprise and resentment, was about to pass him by without a further word. But this was more than Schilsky could bear; he put out his hand to stop her, always, though, with one eye on the door.

“Now, don’t be cross, little girl,” he begged impatiently. “It’s not my fault–upon my word it isn’t. I wasn’t expecting to see you to-day–you know that. Look here, tell me–this sort of thing is so unsatisfactory–is there no other place I could see you? What do you do with yourself all day? Come, answer me, don’t be angry.”

Ephie melted. “Come and visit us on Sunday afternoon,” she said. “We are always at home then.”

He laughed rudely, and took no notice of her words. “Come, think of something–quick!” he said.

He was on tenterhooks to be gone, and showed it. Ephie grew flustered, and though she racked her brains, could make no further suggestion.

“Oh well, if you can’t, you know,” he said crossly, and loosened his hold of her arm.

Then, at the last moment, she had a flash of inspiration; she remembered how, on the previous Sunday, Dove had talked enthusiastically of an opera-performance, which, if she were not mistaken, was to take place the following night. Dove had declared that all musical Leipzig would probably be present in the theatre. Surely she might risk mentioning this, without fear of another snub.

“I am going to the opera to-morrow night,” she said in a small, meek voice, and was on the verge of tears. Schilsky hardly heard her; Louise had appeared at the head of the stairs. “The very thing,” he said. “I shall look out for you there, little girl. Good-bye. AUF WIEDERSEHEN!”

He went down the steps, without even raising his hat, and when Louise came out, he was sauntering towards the building again, as if he had come from the other end of the street.

Ephie went home in a state of anger and humiliation which was new to her. For the first few hours, she was resolved never to speak to Schilsky again. When this mood passed, she made up her mind that he should atone for his behaviour to the last iota: he should grovel before her; she would scarcely deign to look at him. But the nearer the time came for their meeting, the more were her resentful feelings swallowed up by the wish to see him. She counted off the hours till the opera commenced; she concocted a scheme to escape Johanna’s surveillance; she had a story ready, if it should be necessary, of how she had once been introduced to Schilsky. Her fingers trembled with impatience as she fastened on a pretty new dress, which had just been sent home: a light, flowered stuff, with narrow bands of black velvet artfully applied so as to throw the fairness of her hair and skin into relief.

The consciousness of looking her best gave her manner a light sureness that was very charming. But from the moment they entered the FOYER, Ephie’s heart began to sink: the crowd was great; she could not see Schilsky; and in his place came Dove, who was not to be shaken off. Even Maurice was bad enough–what concern of his was it how she enjoyed herself? When, finally, she did discover the person she sought, he was with some one else, and did not see her; and when she had succeeded in making him look, he frowned, shook his head, and made angry signs that she was not to speak to him, afterwards going downstairs with the sallow girl in white. What did it mean? All through the tedious second act, Ephie wound her handkerchief round and round, and in and out of her fingers. Would it never end? How long would the fat, ugly Brunnhilde stand talking to Siegmund and the woman who lay so ungracefully between his knees? As if it mattered a straw what these sham people did or felt! Would he speak to her in the next interval, or would he not?

The side curtains had hardly swept down before she was up from her seat, hurrying Johanna away. This time she chose to stand against the wall, at the end of the FOYER. After a short time, he came in sight, but he had no more attention to spare for her than before; he did not even look in her direction. Her one consolation was that obviously he was not enjoying himself; he wore a surly face, was not speaking, and, to a remark the girl in white made, he answered by an angry flap of the hand. When they had twice gone past in this way, and she had each time vainly put herself forward, Ephie began to take an interest in what Dove was saying, to smile at him and coquet with him, and the more openly, the nearer Schilsky drew. Other people grew attentive, and Dove went into a seventh heaven, which made it hard for him placidly to accept the fit of pettish silence, she subsequently fell into.

The crowning touch was put to this disastrous evening by the fact that Schilsky’s companion of the FOYER walked the greater part of the way home with them; and, what was worse, that she took not the slightest notice of Ephie.

XI.

Before leaving her bedroom the following morning, Ephie wrote on her scented pink paper a short letter, which began: “Dear Mr. Schilsky,” and ended with: “Your sincere friend, Euphemia Stokes Cayhill.” In this letter, she “failed to understand” his conduct of the previous evening, and asked him for an explanation. Not until she had closed the envelope, did she remember that she was ignorant of his address. She bit the end of her pen, thinking hard, and directly breakfast was over, put on her hat and slipped out of the house.

It was the first time Ephie had had occasion to enter the BUREAU of the Conservatorium; and, when the heavy door had swung to behind her, and she was alone in the presence of the secretaries, each of whom was bent over a high desk, writing in a ledger, her courage almost failed her. The senior, an old, white-haired man, with a benevolent face, did not look up; but after she had stood hesitating for some minutes, an under-secretary solemnly laid down his pen, and coming to the counter, wished in English to know what he could do for her. Growing very red, Ephie asked him if he “would . . . could . . . would please tell her where Mr. Schilsky lived.”

Herr Kleefeld leaned both hands on the counter, and disconcerted her by staring at her over his spectacles.

“Mr. Schilsky? Is it very important?” he said with a leer, as if he were making a joke.

“Why, yes, indeed,” replied Ephie timidly.

He nodded his head, more to himself than to her, went back to his desk, opened another ledger, and ran his finger down a page, repeating aloud as he did so, to her extreme embarrassment: “Mr. Schilsky–let me see. Mr. Schilsky–let me see.”

After a pause, he handed her a slip of paper, on which he had painstakingly copied the address: “TALSTRASSE, 12 III.”

“Why, I thank you very much. I have to ask him about some music. Is there anything to pay?” stammered Ephie.

But Herr Kleefeld, leaning as before on the counter, shook his head from side to side, with a waggish air, which confused Ephie still more. She made her escape, and left him there, still wagging, like a china Mandarin.

Having addressed the letter in the nearest post office, she entered a confectioner’s and bought a pound of chocolate creams; so that when Johanna met her in the passage, anxious and angry at her leaving the house without a word, she was able to assert that her candy-box had been empty, and she felt she could not begin to practise till it was refilled. But Johanna was very cantankerous, and obliged her to study an hour overtime to atone for her escapade.

Then followed for Ephie several unhappy days, when all the feeling she seemed capable of concentrated itself on the visits of the postman. She remained standing at the window until she had seen him come up the street, and she was regularly the first to look through the mails as they lay on the lobby table. Two days brought no reply to her letter. On the third fell a lesson, which she was resolved not to take. But when the hour came, she dressed herself with care and went as usual. Schilsky was nowhere to be seen. Half a week later, the same thing was repeated, except that on this day, she made herself prettier than ever: she was like some gay, garden flower, in a big white hat, round the brim of which lay scarlet poppies, and a dress of a light blue, which heightened the colour of her cheeks, and, reflected in her eyes, made them bluer than a fjord in the sun. But her spirits were low; if she did not see him this time, despair would crush her.

But she did–saw him while she was still some distance off, standing near the portico of the Conservatorium; and at the sight of him, after the uncertainty she had gone through during the past week, she could hardly keep back her tears. He did not come to meet her; he stood and watched her approach, and only when she reached him, indolently held out his hand. As she refused to notice it, and went to the extreme