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  • 1808
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edge of the pavement to avoid it, he made a barrier of his arms, and forced her to stand still. Holding her thus, with his hand on her elbow, he looked keenly at her; and, in spite of the obdurate way in which she kept her eyes turned from him, he saw that she was going to cry. For a moment he hesitated, afraid of the threatening scene, then, with a decisive movement, he took her violin-case out of her hand. Ephie made an ineffectual effort to get possession of it again, but he held it above her reach, and saying: “Wait a minute,” ran up the steps. He came back without it, and throwing a swift glance round him, took the young girl’s arm, and walked her off at a brisk pace to the woods. She made a few, faint protests. But he replied: “You and I have something to say to each other, little girl.”

A full hour had elapsed when Ephie appeared again. She was alone, and walked quickly, casting shy glances from side to side. On reaching the Conservatorium, she waited in a quiet corner of the vestibule for nearly a quarter of an hour, before Schilsky sauntered in, and released her violin from the keeping of the janitor, a good friend of his.

They had not gone far into the wood; Schilsky knew of a secluded seat, which was screened by a kind of boscage; and here they had remained. At first, Ephie had cried heartily, in happy relief, and he had not been able to console her. He had come to meet her with many good resolutions, determined not to let the little affair, so lightly begun, lead to serious issues; but Ephie’s tears, and the tale they told, and the sobbed confessions that slipped out unawares, made it hard for him to be wise. He put his arm round her, dried her tears with his own handkerchief, kissed the hand he held. And when he had in this way petted her back to composure, she suddenly looked up in his face, and, with a pretty, confiding movement, said:

“Then you do care for me a little?”

It would have need a stronger than he to answer otherwise. “Of course I do,” was easily said, and to avoid the necessity of more, he kissed the pink dimples at the base of her four fingers, as well as the baby crease that marked the wrist. The poppy-strewn hat lay on the seat beside them; the fluffy head and full white throat were bare; in the mellow light of the trees, the lashes looked jet-black on her cheeks; at each word, he saw her small, even teeth: and he was so unnerved by the nearness of all this fresh young beauty that, when Ephie with her accustomed frankness had told him everything he cared to know, he found himself saying, in place of what he had intended, that they must be very cautious. In the meantime, it would not do for them to be seen together: it might injure his prospects, be harmful to his future.

“Yes, but afterwards?” she asked him promptly.

He kissed her cheek. But she repeated the question, and he was obliged to reply: that would be a different matter. It was now her turn to be curious, and one of the first questions she put related to the dark girl he had been with at the theatre. Playing lightly with her fingers, Schilsky told her that this was one of his best friends, some one he had known for a long, long time, to whom he owed much, and whom he could under no circumstances offend. Ephie looked grave for a moment; and, in the desire of provoking a pretty confession, he asked her if she had minded very much seeing him with some one else. But she made him wince by responding with perfect candour: “With her? Oh, no! She’s quite old.”

Before parting, they arranged the date of the next meeting, and, a beginning once made, they saw each other as often as was feasible. Ephie grew wonderfully apt at excuses for going out at odd times, and for prolonged absences. Sound fictions were needed to satisfy Johanna, and even Maurice Guest was made to act as dummy: he had taken her for a walk, or they had been together to see Madeleine Wade; and by these means, and also by occasionally shirking a lesson, she gained a good deal of freedom. Johanna would as soon have thought of herself being untruthful as of doubting Ephie, whom she had never known to tell a lie; and if she did sometimes feel jealous of all the new claims made on her little sister’s attention, such a feeling was only temporary, and she was, for the most part, content to see Ephie content.

At night, in her own room, lying wakeful with hot cheeks and big eyes, Ephie went over in memory all that had taken place at their last meeting, or built high, top-heavy castles for the future. She was absurdly happy; and her mother and sister had never found her more charming and lovable, or richer in those trifling inspirations for brightening life, which happiness brings with it. She looked forward with secret triumph to the day when she would be able to announce her engagement to the celebrated young violinist, and the only shadow on her happiness was that she could not do this immediately. It did not once cross her mind to doubt the issue: she had always had her way, and, in her own mind, had long since arranged just how this matter was to fall out. She would return to America–where, of course, they would live–and get her clothes ready, and then he would come, and they would be married–a big wedding, with descriptions in the newspapers. They would have a big house, and he would play at concerts–as she had once heard Sarasate play in New York–and every one would stand on tiptoe to see him. She sat proud and conspicuous in the front row. “His wife. That is his wife!” people whispered, and they drew respectfully back to let her pass, as, in a very becoming dress, she swept into the little room behind the platform, which she alone was permitted to enter.

One day at this time there was a violent thunderstorm. Towards midday, the eastern sky grew black with clouds, which, for hours, had been ominously gathering; a sudden wind rose and swept the dust house-high through the streets; the thunder rumbled, and each roll came nearer. When, after a prolonged period of expectation, the storm finally burst, there was a universal sigh of relief.

The afternoon was damply refreshing. As soon as the rain ceased, Maurice shut his piano, and walked at a brisk pace to Connewitz, his head bared beneath the overhanging branches, which were still weighed down by their burden of drops. At the WALDCAFE on the bank of the river, in a thickly grown arbour which he entered to drink a glass of beer, he found Philadelphia Jensen and the pale little American, Fauvre, taking coffee.

The lady welcomed him with a large, outstretched hand, in the effusively hearty manner with which she, as it were, took possession of people; and towards six o’clock, the three walked back through the woods together, Miss Jensen, resolute of bust as of voice, slightly ahead of her companions, carrying her hat in her hand, Fauvre dragging behind, hitting indolently at stones and shrubs, and singing scraps of melodies to himself in his deep baritone.

Miss Jensen, who had once been a journalist, was an earnest worker for woman’s emancipation, and having now successfully mounted her hobby, spoke with a thought-deadening eloquence. Maurice had never been called on to think about the matter, and listened to her words absent-mindedly, comparing her, as she swept along, to a ship in full sail. She was just asserting that the ordinary German woman was little more than means to an end, the end being the man-child, when his attention was arrested, and, in an instant, jerked far away from Miss Jensen’s theories. As they reached the bend of a path, a sound of voices came to them through the trees, and on turning a corner, Maurice caught a glimpse of two people who were going in the opposite direction, down a side-walk–a passing but vivid glimpse of a light, flowered dress, of a grey suit of clothes, and auburn hair. Ephie! He could have sworn to voice and dress; but to whom in all the world was she talking, so confidentially? At the name that rose to his lips, he almost stopped short, but the next moment he was afraid lest his companions should also have seen who it was, and, quickening his steps, he incited Miss Jensen to talk on. First, however, that lady said in a surprised tone: “Say, that was Mr. Schilsky, wasn’t it? Who was the lady? Did you perceive?” So there was no possible doubt of it.

After parting from his companions, he did an errand in the town, and from there went to the Cayhills’ PENSION, determined to ascertain whether it had really been Ephie he had seen, and if so, what the meaning of it was.

Mrs. Cayhill and Johanna were in the sitting-room; Johanna looked very surprised to see him. They had this moment risen from the supper-table, she told him; Ephie had only just got home in time. Before anything further could be said, Ephie herself came into the room; her face was flushed, and she did not seem well-pleased at his unexpected visit. She hardly greeted him, and instead, commenced talking about the weather.

“Then you had a pleasant walk?” asked Johanna in a preoccupied fashion, without looking up from the letter she was writing; and before Maurice could speak, Ephie, fondling her sister’s neck, answered: “How could it be anything but sweet–after the rain?”

In the face of this frankness, it was on Maurice’s tongue to say: “Then it was you, I saw?” but again she did not give him time. Still standing behind Johanna’s chair, her eyes fixed on the young man’s face with a curious intentness, she continued: “We walked right to Connewitz and back without a rest.”

“I don’t think you should take her so far,” said Mrs. Cayhill, looking up from her book with her kindly smile. “She has never been used to walking and is easily tired–aren’t you, my pet?”

“Yes, and then she can’t get up the next morning,” said Johanna, mildly dogmatic, considering the following sentence of her letter.

Gradually it broke upon Maurice that Ephie had been making use of his name. His consternation at the discovery was such that he changed colour. The others, however, were both too engrossed to notice it. Ephie grew scarlet, but continued to rattle on, covering his silence.

“Well, perhaps to-day it was a little too far,” she admitted. “But mummy, I won’t have you say I’m not strong. Why, Herr Becker is always telling me how full my tone is getting. Yes indeed. And look at my muscle.”

She turned back the loose sleeve of her blouse, baring almost the whole of her rounded arm; then, folding it sharply to her, she invited one after another to test its firmness.

“Quite a prize-fighter, I declare!” laughed Mrs. Cayhill, at the same time drawing her little daughter to her, to kiss her. But Johanna frowned, and told Ephie to put down her sleeve at once; there was something in the childish action that offended the elder sister, she did not know why. But Maurice had first to lay two of his fingers on the soft skin, and then to help her to button the cuff.

When, soon after this, he took his leave, Ephie went out of the room with him. In the dark passage, she caught at his hand.

“Morry, you mustn’t tell tales on me,” she whispered; and added pettishly: “Why ever did you just come to-night?”

He tried to see her face. “What is it all about, Ephie?” he asked. “Then it WAS you, I saw, in the NONNE–by the weir?”

“Me? In the NONNE!” She was genuinely surprised. “You saw me?”

He nodded. By the light that came from the stairs as she opened the hall-door, she noticed that he looked troubled, and an impulse rose in her to throw her arms round his neck and say: “Yes, yes, it was me. Oh, Morry, I am so happy!” But she remembered the reasons for secrecy that had been imposed on her, and, at the same time, felt somewhat defiantly inclined towards Maurice. After all, what business was it of his? Why should he take her to task for what she chose to do? And so she merely laughed, with assumed merriment, her own charming, assuaging laugh.

“In the wood?–you old goose! Listen, Morry, I told them I had been with you, because–why, because one of the girls in my class asked me to go to the CAFE FRANCAIS with her, and we stayed too long, and ate too much ice-cream, and Joan doesn’t like it, and I knew she would be cross–that’s all! Don’t look so glum, you silly! It’s nothing,” and she laughed again.

As long as this laugh rang in his ears–to the bottom of the street, that is–he believed her. Then, the evidence of his senses reasserted itself, and he knew that what she had told him was false. He had heard her voice in the wood too distinctly to allow of any mistake, and she was still wearing the same dress. Besides, she had lied so artlessly to the others, without a tremor of her candid eyes–why should she not lie to him, too? She was less likely to be considerate of him than of Johanna. But his distress at her skill in deceit was so great that he said: “Ephie, little Ephie!” aloud to himself, just as he might have done had he heard that she was stricken down by a mortal illness.

On the top of this, however, came less selfish feelings. What was almost a sense of guilt took possession of him; he felt as if, in some way, he were to blame for what had happened; as if nature had intended him to stand in the place of a brother to this pretty, thoughtless child. And yet what could he have done? He did not now see Ephie as often as formerly, and hardly ever alone; on looking back, he began to suspect that she had purposely avoided him. The exercises in harmony, which had previously brought them together, had been discontinued. First, she had said that her teacher was satisfied with what she herself could do; then, that he had advised her to give up harmony altogether: she would never make anything of it. In the light of what had come to pass, Maurice saw that he had let himself be duped by her; she had lied then as now.

He puzzled his brains to imagine how she had learned to know Schilsky in the first instance, and when the affair had begun: what he had overheard that afternoon implied an advanced stage of intimacy; and he revolved measures by means of which a stop might be put to it. The only course he could think of was to lay the matter before Johanna; and yet what would the use of that be? Ephie would deny everything, make his story ludicrous, himself impossible, and never forgive him into the bargain. In the end, he might do more good by watching over her silently, at a distance. If it had only not been Schilsky who was concerned! Some of the ugly stories he had heard related of the young man rose up and took vivid shape before his eyes. If any harm came to Ephie, he alone would be to blame for it; not Johanna, only he knew the frivolous temptations the young girl was exposed to. Why, in Heaven’s name, had he not taken both her hands, as they stood in the passage, and insisted on her confessing to him? No, credulous as usual, he had once more allowed himself to be hoodwinked and put off.

Thus he fretted, without arriving at any clearer conclusion than this: that he had unwittingly been made accessory to an unpleasant secret. But where his mind baulked, and refused to work, was when he tried to understand what all this might mean to the third person involved. Did Louise know or suspect anything? Had she, perhaps, for weeks past been suffering under the knowledge?

He stood irresolute, at the crossing where the MOZARTSTRASSE joined the PROMENADE. A lamp-lighter was beginning his rounds; he came up with his long pole to the lamp at the corner, and, with a mild explosion, the little flame sprang into life. Maurice turned on his heel and went to see Madeleine.

The latter was making her supper of tea, bread, and cold sausage, and when she heard that he had not eaten, she set a cup and plate before him, and was glad that she happened to be late. Propped open on the table was a Danish Grammar, which she conned as she ate; for, in the coming holidays, she was engaged to go to Norway, as guide and travelling-companion to a party of Englishwomen.

“I had a letter from London to-day,” she said, “with definite arrangements. So I at once bought this book. I intend to try and master at least the rudiments of the language–barbarous though it is–for I want to get some good from the journey. And if one has one’s wits about one, much can be learnt from cab-drivers and railway-porters.”

She traced on a map with her forefinger the route they proposed to follow, and laughed at the idea of the responsibility lying heavy on her. But when they had finished their supper, and she had talked informingly for a time of Norway, its people and customs, she looked at the young man, who sat irresponsive and preoccupied, and considered him attentively.

“Is anything the matter to-night? Or are you only tired?”

He was tired. But though she herself had suggested it, she was not satisfied with his answer.

“Something has bothered you. Has your work gone badly?”

No, it was nothing of that sort. But Madeleine persisted: could she be of any help to him?

“The merest trifle–not worth talking about.”

The twilight had grown thick around them; the furniture of the room lost its form, and stood about in shapeless masses. Through the open window was heard the whistle of a distant train; a large fly that had been disturbed buzzed distractingly, undecided where to re-settle for the night. It was sultry again, after the rain.

“Look here, Maurice,” Madeleine said, when she had observed him for some time in silence. “I don’t want to be officious, but there’s something I should like to say to you. It’s this. You are far too soft-hearted. If you want to get on in life, you must think more about yourself than you do. The battle is to the strong, you know, and the strong, within limits, are certainly the selfish. Let other people look after themselves; try not to mind how foolish they are–you can’t improve them. It’s harder, I daresay, than it is to be a person of unlimited sympathies; it’s harder to pass the maimed and crippled by, than to stop and weep over them, and feel their sufferings through yourself. But YOU have really something in you to occupy yourself with. You’re not one of those people–I won’t mention names!–whose own emptiness forces them to take an intense interest in the doings of others, and who, the moment they are alone with their thoughts, are bored to desperation. just as there are people who have no talent for making a home home-like, and are only happy when they are out of it.”

Here she laughed at her own seriousness.

“But you are smiling inwardly, and thinking: the real old school-marm!”

“You don’t practise what you preach, Madeleine. Besides, you’re mistaken. At heart, I’m a veritable egoist.”

She contradicted him. “I know you better than you know yourself.”

He did not reply, and a silence fell, in which the commonplace words she had last said, went on sounding and resounding, until they had no more likeness to themselves. Madeleine rose, and pushed back her chair, with a grating noise.

“I must light the lamp. Sitting in the dark makes for foolishness. Come, wake up, and tell me what plans you have for the holidays.”

“If I had a sister, I should like her to be like you,” said Maurice, watching her busy with the lamp. “Clear-headed, and helpful to a fellow.”

“I suppose men always will continue to consider that the greatest compliment they can pay,” said Madeleine, and turned up the light so high that they both blinked.–And then she scolded the young man soundly for his intention of remaining in Leipzig during the holidays.

But when he rose to go, she said, with an impulsiveness that was foreign to her: “I wish you had a friend.”

It was his turn to smile. “Have you had enough of me?”

Madeleine, who was sitting with crossed arms, remained grave. “I mean a man. Some one older than yourself, and who has had experience. The best-meaning woman in the world doesn’t count.”

Only a very few days later, an occasion offered when, with profit to himself, he might have acted upon Madeleine’s introductory advice. He had been for a quick, solitary walk, and was returning, in the evening between nine and ten o’clock, along one of the paths of the wood, when suddenly, and close at hand, he heard the sound of voices. He stopped instantaneously, for by the jump his heart gave, he knew that Louise was one of the speakers. What she said was inaudible to him; but it was enough to be able to listen, unseen, to her voice. Hearing it like this, as something existing for itself, he was amazed at its depth and clearness; he felt that her personal presence had, until now, hindered him from appreciating a beautiful but immaterial thing at its true worth. At first, like a cadence that repeats itself, its tones rose and fell, but with more subtle inflections than the ordinary voice has: there was a note in it that might have belonged to a child’s voice; another, more primitive, that betrayed feeling with as little reserve as the cry of an animal. Then it sank, and went on in a monotone, like a Hebrew prayer, as if reiterating things worn threadbare by repetition, and already said too often. Gradually, it died away in the surrounding silence. There was no response but a gentle rustling of the leaves overhead. It began anew, and, in the interval, seemed to have gained in intensity; now there was a bitterness in it which, when it swelled, made it give out a tone like the roughly touched strings of an instrument; it seemed to be accusing, to be telling of unmerited suffering. And, this time, it elicited a reply, but a casual, indifferent one, which might have related to the weather, or to the time of night. Louise gave a shrill laugh, and then, as plainly as if the words were being carved in stone before his eyes, Maurice heard her say: “You have never given me a moment’s happiness.”

As before, no answer was returned, and almost immediately his ear caught a muffled sound of footsteps. At the same moment, a night-wind shook the tree-tops; there was a general fluttering and swaying around him; and he came back to himself to find that he was standing rigid, holding on to a slender tree that grew close by the path. His first conscious thought was that this wind meant rain . . . there would be another storm in the night . . . and the summer holidays–time of partings–were at the door. She would go away . . . and he would perhaps never see her again.

Since the evening they had walked home from the theatre together, he had had no further chance of speaking to her. If they met in the street, she gave him, as Madeleine had foretold of her, a nod and a smile; and from this coolness, he had drawn the foolish inference that she wished to avoid him. Abnormally sensitive, he shrank out of her way. But now, the mad sympathy that had permeated him on the night she had made him her confidant grew up in him again; it swelled out into something monstrous–a gigantic pity that rebounded on himself. For he knew now why she suffered; and he was cast down both for her and for himself. It seemed unnatural that he was debarred from giving her just a fraction of the happiness she craved–he, who, had there been the least need for it, would have lain himself down for her to tread on. And in some of the subsequent nights when he could not sleep, he composed fantastic letters to her, in which he told her this and more, only to colour guiltily, with the return of daylight, at the impertinent folly of his thoughts.

But he could not forget the words he had heard her say; they haunted him like an importunate refrain. Even his busiest hours were set to them–“You have never given me a moment’s happiness”–and they were alike a torture and a joy.

XII.

The second half of July scattered the little circle in all directions. Maurice spent a couple of days at the different railway-stations, seeing his friends off. One after another they passed into that anticipatory mood, which makes an egoist of the prospective traveller: his thoughts start, as it were, in advance; he has none left for the people who are remaining behind, and receives their care and attention as his due.

Dove was packed and strapped, ready to set out an hour after he had had his last lesson; and while he printed labels for his luggage, and took a circumstantial leave of his landlady and her family, with whom he was a prime favourite by reason of his decent and orderly habits, Maurice fetched for him from the lending library, the pieces of music set by Schwarz as a holiday task. Dove was on tenterhooks to be off. Of late, things had gone superlatively well with him: he had performed with applause in an ABENDUNTERHALTUNG, and been highly commended by Schwarz; while, as for Ephie, she had been so sweet and winning, so modestly encouraging of his suit, that he had every reason to hope for success in this quarter also. Too dutiful a son, however, to take, unauthorised, such an important step as that of proposing marriage, he was now travelling home to sound two elderly people, resident in a side street in Peterborough, on the advisability of an American daughter-in-law.

The Cayhills had been among the first to leave, and would be absent till the middle of September. One afternoon, Maurice started them from the THURINGER BAHNHOF, on their journey to Switzerland. Having seen Mrs. Cayhill comfortably settled with her bags, books and cushions, in the corner of a first-class carriage, and given Johanna assistance with the tickets, he stood till the train went, talking to Ephie; and he long retained a picture of her, standing with one foot on the step, in a becoming travelling-dress, a hat with a veil flying from it, and a small hand-bag slung across her shoulder, laughing and dimpling, and well aware of the admiring glances that were cast at her. It was a relief to Maurice that she was going away for a time; his feeling of responsibility with regard to her had not flagged, and he had made a point of seeing her more often, and of knowing more of her movements than before. As, however, he had not observed anything further to disturb him, his suspicions were on the verge of subsiding–as suspicions have a way of doing when we wish them to–and in the last day or two, he had begun to feel much less sure, and to wonder if, after all, he had not been mistaken.

“I shall miss you, Morry. I almost wish I were not going,” said Ephie, and this was not untrue, in spite of the pretty new dresses her trunks contained. “Say, I don’t believe I shall enjoy myself one bit. You will write, Morry, won’t you, and tell me what goes on? All the news you hear and who you see and everything.”—-

“Be sure you write,” said Madeleine, too, when he saw her off early in the morning to Berlin, where she was to meet her English charges. “Christiania, POSTE RESTANTE, till the first, and then Bergen. ‘FROKEN WADE,’ don’t forget.”

The train started; her handkerchief fluttered from the window until the carriage was out of sight.

Maurice was alone; every one he knew disappeared, even Furst, who had obtained a holiday engagement in a villa near Dresden. An odd stillness reigned in the BRAUSTRASSE and its neighbourhood; from houses which had hitherto been clangrous with musical noises, not a sound issued. Familiar rooms and lodgings were either closely shuttered, or, in process of scouring, hung out their curtains to flutter on the sill.

The days passed, unmarked, eventless, like the uniform pages of a dull book. When the solitude grew unbearable, Maurice went to visit Frau Furst, and had his supper with the family. He was a welcome guest, for he not only paid for all the beer that was drunk, but also brought such a generous portion of sausage for his own supper, that it supplied one or other of the little girls as well. Afterwards, they sat round the kitchen-table, listening, the children with the old-fashioned solemnity that characterised them, to Frau Furst’s reminiscences. Otherwise, he hardly exchanged a word with anyone, but sat at his piano the livelong day. Of late, Schwarz had been somewhat cool and off-hand in manner with him; the master had also not displayed the same detailed interest in his plans for the summer, as in those of the rest of the class. This was one reason why he had not gone away like every one else; the other, that he had been unwilling to write home for an increase of allowance. Sometimes, when the day was hot, he envied his friends refreshing themselves by wood, mountain or sea; but, in the main, he worked briskly at Czerny’s FINGERFERTIGKEIT, and with such perseverance that ultimately his fingers stumbled from fatigue.

With the beginning of August, the heat grew oppressive; all day long, the sun beat, fierce and unremittent, on this city of the plains, and the baked pavements were warm to the feet. Business slackened, and the midday rest in shops and offices was extended beyond its usual limit. Conservatorium and Gewandhaus, at first given over to relays of charwomen, their brooms and buckets, soon lay dead and deserted, too; and if, in the evening, Maurice passed the former building, he would see the janitor sitting at leisure in the middle of the pavement, smoking his long black cigar. The old trees in the PROMENADE, and the young striplings that followed the river in the LAMPESTRASSE, drooped their brown leaves thick with dust; the familiar smell of roasting coffee, which haunted most house- and stair-ways, was intensified; and out of drains and rivers rose nauseous and penetrating odours, from which there was no escape. Every three or four days, when the atmosphere of the town had reached a pitch of unsavouriness which it seemed impossible to surpass, sudden storms swept up, tropical in their violence: blasts of thunder cracked like splitting beams; lightning darted along the narrow streets; rain fell in white, sizzling sheets. But the morning after, it was as hot as ever.

Maurice grew so accustomed to meet no one he knew, that one afternoon towards the middle of August, he was pulled up by a jerk of surprise in front of the PLEISSENBURG, on stumbling across Heinrich Krafft. He had stopped and impulsively greeted the young man, before he recalled his previous antipathy to him.

Krafft was sauntering along with his hands in his pockets, and, on being accosted, he looked vaguely and somewhat moodily at Maurice. The next moment, however, he laid a hand on the lappel of Maurice’s coat, and, without preamble, burst into a witty and obscene anecdote, which had evidently been in his mind when they met. This story, and the fact that, by the North Sea, he had stood before breakers twenty feet high, were the only particulars Maurice bore away from their interview. His previous impatience with such eccentricity returned, but none the less, he looked grudgingly after the other’s vanishing form.

A day or two later, towards evening, he saw Krafft again. As he was going through an outlying street, he came upon a group of children, who were amusing themselves by teasing a cat; the animal had been hit in the eye by a stone, and cowered, terrified and blinded, against the wall of a house. The children formed a half circle round it, and two of the biggest boys held a young and lively dog by the collar, inciting it and restraining it, and revelling in the cat’s convulsive starts at each capering bark.

While Maurice was considering how to expostulate with them, Krafft came swiftly up behind, jerked two of the children apart, and, with a deft and perfectly noiseless movement, caught up the cat and hid its head under his coat. Then, cuffing the biggest boy, he kicked the dog, and ordered the rest to disperse. The children did so lingeringly; and once out of his reach, stood and mocked him.

He begged Maurice to accompany him to his lodgings, and there Maurice held the animal, a large, half-starved street-cat, while Krafft, on his knees before it, examined the wound. As he did this, he crooned in a wordless language, and the cat was quiet, in spite of the pain he caused it. But directly he took his hands off it, it jumped from the table, and fled under the furthest corner of the sofa.

Krafft next fetched milk and a saucer, from a cupboard in the wall, and went down on his knees again: while Maurice sat and watched and wondered at his tireless endeavours to induce the animal to advance. He explained his proceedings in a whisper.

“If I put the saucer down and leave it,” he said, “it won’t help at all. A cat’s confidence must be won straight away.”

He was still in this position, making persuasive little noises, when the door opened, and Avery Hill, his companion of a previous occasion, entered. At the sight of Krafft crouching on the floor, she paused with her hand on the door, and looked from him to Maurice.

“Heinz?” she said interrogatively. Then she saw the saucer of milk, and understood. “Heinz!” she said again; and this time the word was a reprimand.

“Ssh!–be quiet,” said Krafft peevishly, without looking up.

The girl took no notice of Maurice’s attempt to greet her. Letting fall on the grand piano, some volumes of music she was carrying, she continued sternly: “Another cat!–oh, it is abominable of you! This is the third he has picked up this year,” she said explanatorily, yet not more to Maurice than to herself. “And the last was so dirty and destructive that Frau Schulz threatened to turn him out, if he did not get rid of it. He knows as well as I do that he cannot keep a cat here.”

Her placidly tragic face had grown hard; and altogether, the anger she displayed seemed out of proportion to the trival offence.

Krafft remained undisturbed. “It’s not the least use scolding. Go and make it right with the old crow.–Come, puss, come.”

The girl checked the words that rose to her lips, gave a slight shrug, and went out of the room. They heard her, in the passage, disputing with the landlady, who was justly indignant.

“If it weren’t for you, Fraulein, I wouldn’t keep him another day,” she declared.

Meanwhile the cat, which, in the girl’s presence, had shrunk still further into its hiding-place, began to make advances. It crept a step forward, retreated again, stretched out its nose to sniff at the milk, and, all of a sudden, emerged and drank greedily.

Krafft touched its head, and the animal paused in its hungry gulping to rub its back against the caressing hand. When the last drop of milk was finished, it withdrew to its corner, but less suspiciously.

Krafft rose to his feet and stretched himself, and when Avery returned, he smiled at her.

“Now then, is it all right?”

She did not reply, but went to the piano, to search for something among the scattered music. Krafft clasped his hands behind his head, and leaning against the table, watched her with an ironical curl of the lip.

“O LENE! LENE! O MAGDALENE!” he sang under his breath; and, for the second time, Maurice received the impression that a by-play was being carried on between these two.

“Look at this,” said Krafft after a pause. “Here, ladies and gentlemen, is one of those rare persons who have a jot of talent in them, and off she goes–I don’t mean at this moment, but tomorrow, the day after, every day–to waste it in teaching children finger-exercises. If you ask her why she does it, she will tell you it is necessary to live. Necessary to live!–who has ever proved that it is?”

For an instant, it seemed as if the girl were going to flash out a bitter retort that might have betrayed her. Then she showed the same self-control as before, and went, without a word, into the next room. She was absent for a few minutes, and when she reappeared, carried what was unmistakably a bundle of soiled linen, going away with this on one arm, the volumes of music she had picked out on the other. She did not wish the young men good-night, but, in passing Maurice, she said in an unfriendly tone: “Do you know what time it is?” and to Krafft: “It is late, Heiriz, you are not to play.”

The door had barely closed behind her, when Krafft broke into the loud, repellent laugh that had so jarred on Maurice at their former meeting. He had risen at once, and now said he must go. But Krafft would not hear of it; he pressed him into his seat again, with an effusive warmth of manner.

“Don’t mind her. Stay, like a good fellow. Of course, I am going to play to you.”

He flicked the keys of the piano with his handkerchief, adjusted the distance of his seat, threw back his head, and half closing his eyes, began to play. Except for the unsteady flickerings cast on the wall by a street-lamp, the room was soon in darkness.

Maurice resumed his seat reluctantly. He had been dragged upstairs against his will; and throughout the foregoing scene, had sat an uncomfortable spectator. He had as little desire for the girl to return and find him there, as for Krafft to play to him. But no excuse for leaving offered itself, and each moment made it harder to interrupt the player, who had promptly forgotten the fact of his presence.

After he had listened for a time, however, Maurice ceased to think of escaping. Madeleine had once alluded to Krafft’s skill as an interpreter of Chopin, but, all the same, he had not expected anything like what he now heard, and at first he could not make anything of it. He had hitherto only known Chopin’s music as played in the sentimental fashion of the English drawing-room. Here, now, came some one who made it clear that, no matter how pessimistic it appeared on the surface, this music was, at its core an essentially masculine music; it kicked desperately against the pricks of existence; what failed it was only the last philosophic calm. He could not, of course, know that various small things had combined to throw the player into one of his most prodigal moods: the rescue and taming of the cat, the passage-at-arms with Avery, her stimulating forbiddal, and, last and best, the one silent listener in the dark–this stranger, picked up at random in the streets, who had never yet heard him play, and to whom he might reveal himself with an indecency that friendship precluded.

When at length, Frau Schulz entered, in her bed-jacket, to say that it was long past ten o’clock, Krafft wakened as if out of a trance, and hid his eyes from the light. Frau Schulz, a robust person, disregarded his protests, and herself locked the piano and took the key.

“She makes me promise to,” she whispered to Maurice, pointing over her shoulder at an imaginary person. “If I didn’t, he’d go on all night. He’s no more fit to look after himself than a baby–and he gets it again with his boots in the morning.–Yes, yes, call me names if it pleases you. Names don’t kill. And if I am a hag, you’re a rascal, that’s what you are! The way you treat that poor, good creature makes one’s blood boil.”

Krafft waved her away, and opening the window, leaned out on the sill: a wave of warm air filled the room. Maurice rose with renewed decision, and sought his hat. But Krafft also took his down from a peg. “Yes, let us go out.”

It was a breathless August night, laden with intensified scents and smells, and the moonlight lay thick and white on the ground: a night to provoke to extravagant follies. In the utter stillness of the woods, the young men passed from places of inky blackness into bluish white patches, dropped through the trees like monstrous silver thalers. The town lay behind them in a glorifying haze; the river stretched silver-scaled in the moonlight, like a gigantic fish-back.

Krafft walked in front of his companion, in preoccupied silence. His slender hands, dangling loosely, still twitched from their recent exertions, and from time to time, he turned the palms outward, with an impatient gesture. Maurice wished himself alone. He was not at ease under this new companionship that had thrust itself upon him; indeed, a strong mental antagonism was still uppermost in him, towards the moody creature at whose heels he followed; and if, at this moment, he had been asked to give voice to his feelings, the term “crazy idiot” would have been the first to rise to his lips.

Suddenly, without turning, or slackening his pace, Krafft commenced to speak: at first in a low voice, as if he were thinking aloud. But one word gave another, his thoughts came rapidly, he began to gesticulate, and finally, wrought on by the beauty of the night, by this choice moment for speech, still excited by his own playing, and in an infinite need of expression, he swept the silence before him with the force of a flood set free. If he thought Maurice were about to interrupt him, he made an imploring gesture, and left what he was saying unfinished, to spring over to the next theme ready in his brain. Names jostled one another on his tongue: he passed from Beethoven and Chopin to Berlioz and Wagner, to Liszt and Richard Strauss–and his words were to Maurice like the unrolling of a great scroll. In the same breath, he was with Nietzsche, and Apollonic and Dionysian; and from here he went on to Richard Dehmel, to ANATOL, and the gentle “Loris” of the early verses; to Max Klinger, and the propriety of coloured sculpture; to PAPA HAMLET and the future of the LIED. Maurice, listening intently, had fleeting glimpses into a land of which he knew nothing. He kept as still as a mouse, in order not to betray his ignorance; for Krafft was not didactic, and talked as if the subjects he touched on were as familiar to Maurice as to himself. On the other hand, Maurice believed it was a matter of indifference to him whether he was understood or not; he spoke for the pure joy of talking, out of the motley profusion of his knowledge.

Meanwhile, he had grown personal. And while he was still speaking with fervour of Vienna–which was his home–of gay, melancholy Wien, he flung round and put a question to his companion.

“Do you ever think of death?”

Maurice had been the listener for so long that he started.

“Death?” he echoed, and was as much embarrassed as though asked whether he believed in God. “I don’t know. No, I don’t think I do. Why should one think of death when one is alive and well?”

Krafft laughed at this, with a pitying irony. “Happy you!” he said. “Happy you!” His voice sank, and he continued almost fearfully: “I have the vision of it before me, always wherever I go. Listen; I will tell you; it is like this.” He laid his hand on Maurice’s arm, and drew him nearer. “I know–no matter how strong and sound I may be at this moment; no matter how I laugh, or weep, or play the fool; no matter how little thought I give it, or whether I think about it all day long–I know the hour will come, at last, when I shall gasp, choke, grow black in the face, in the vain struggle for another single mouthful of that air which has always been mine at will. And no one will be able to help me; there is no escape from that hour; no power on earth can keep it from me. And it is all a matter of chance when it happens–a great lottery: one draws to-day, one to-morrow; but my turn will surely come, and each day that passes brings me twenty-four hours nearer the end.” He drew still closer to Maurice. “Tell me, have you never stood before a doorway–the doorway of some strange house that you have perhaps never consciously gone past before–and waited, with the atrocious curiosity that death and its hideous paraphernalia waken in one, for a coffin to be carried out?–the coffin of an utter stranger, who is of interest to you now, for the first and the last time. And have you not thought to yourself, with a shudder, that some day, in this selfsame way, under the same indifferent sky, among a group of loiterers as idly curious as these, you yourself will be carried out, feet foremost, like a bale of goods, like useless lumber, all will and dignity gone from you, never to enter there again?–there, where all the little human things you have loved, and used, and lived amongst, are lying just as you left them–the book you laid down, the coat you wore–now all of a greater worth than you. You are mere dead flesh, and behind the horrid lid lie stark and cold, with rigid fingers and half-closed eyes, and the chief desire of every one, even of those you have loved most, is to be rid of you, to be out of reach of sight and smell of you. And so, after being carted, and jolted, and unloaded, you will be thrown into a hole, and your body, ice-cold, and as yielding as meat to the touch–oh, that awful icy softness!–your flesh will begin to rot, to be such that not your nearest friend would touch you. God, it is unbearable!”

He wiped his forehead, and Maurice was silent, not knowing what to say; he felt that such rational arguments as he might be able to offer, would have little value in the face of this intensely personal view, which was stammered forth with the bitterness of an accusation. But as they crossed the suspensionbridge, Krafft stopped, and stood looking at the water, which glistened in the moonlight like a living thing.

“No, it is impossible for me to put death out of my mind,” he went on. “And yet, a spring into this silver fire down here would end all that, and satisfy one’s curiosity as well. Why is one not readier to make the spring?–and what would one’s sensations be? The mad rush through the air–the crash–the sinking in the awful blackness . . .”

“Those of fear and cold. You would wish yourself out again,” answered Maurice; and as Krafft nodded, without seeming to resent his tone, he ventured to put forward a few points for the other side of the question. He suggested that always to be brooding over death unfitted you for life. Every one had to die when his time came; it was foolish to look upon your own death as an exception to the rule. Besides, when sensation had left you–the soul, the spirit, whatever you liked to call it–what did it matter what afterwards became of your body? It was, then, in reality, nothing but lumber, fresh nourishment for the soil; and it was morbid to care so much how it was treated, just because it had once been your tenement, when it was now as worthless as the crab’s empty shell.

He stuttered this out piece-wise, in his halting German; then paused, not sure how his companion would take the didactic tone he had fallen into. But Krafft had turned, and was gazing at him, considering him attentively for the first time. When Maurice ceased to speak, he nodded a hasty assent: “Yes, yes, it is quite true. Go on.” And as the former, having nothing more to say, was mute, he added: “You are like some one I once knew. He was a great musician. I saw him die; he died by inches; it lasted for months; he could neither die nor live.”

“Why do you brood over these things, if you find them so awful? Are you not afraid your nerves will go through with you, and make you do something foolish?” asked Maurice, and was himself astonished at his boldness.

“Of course I am. My life is a perpetual struggle against suicide,” answered Krafft.

In the distance, a church-clock struck a quarter to twelve, and it was on Maurice’s tongue to suggest that they should move homewards, when, with one of his unexpected transitions, Krafft turned to him and said in a low voice: “What do you say? Shall you and I be friends?”

Maurice hesitated, in some embarrassment. “Why yes, I should be very glad.”

“And you will let me say ‘DU’ to you?”

“Certainly. If you are sure you won’t regret it in the morning.”

Krafft stretched out his hand. As Maurice held in his the fine, slim fingers, which seemed mere skin and muscle, a hitherto unknown feeling of kindliness came over him for the young man at his side. At this moment, he had the lively sensation that he was the stronger and wiser of the two, and that it was even a little beneath him to take the other too seriously.

“You think so poorly of me then? You think no good thing can come out of me?” asked Krafft, and there was an appealing note in his voice, which, but a short time back, had been so overbearing.

Had Maurice known him better, he would have promptly retorted: “Don’t be a fool.” As it was, he laughed. “Who am I to sit in judgment? The only thing I do know is, that if I had your talent–no, a quarter of it–I should pull myself together and astonish the world.”

“It sounds so easy; but I have too many doubts of myself,” said Krafft, and laid his hand on Maurice’s shoulder. “And I have never had anyone to keep me up to the mark–till now. I have always needed some one like you. You are strong and sympathetic; and one has the feeling that you understand.”

Maurice was far from certain that he did. However, he answered in a frank way, doing his best to keep down the sentimental tone that had invaded the conversation. At heart he was little moved by this new friendship, which hail begun with the word itself; he told himself that it was only a whim of Krafft’s, which would be forgotten in the morning. But, as they stood thus on the bridge, shoulder to shoulder, he did not understand how he could ever have taken anything this frail creature did, amiss. At the moment, there was a clinging helplessness about Krafft, which instinctively roused his manlier feelings. He said to himself that he had done wrong in lightly condemning his companion; and, impelled by this sudden burst of protectiveness, he seized the moment, and spoke earnestly to Krafft of earnest things, of duty, not only to one’s fellows, but to oneself and one’s abilities, of the inspiring gain of unremitted endeavour.

Afterwards, they sauntered home–first to Maurice’s lodging, then to Krafft’s, and once again to Maurice’s. At this stage, Krafft was frankness itself; Maurice learnt to his surprise that the slim, boyish lad at his side was over twenty-seven years of age; that, for several semesters, Krafft had studied medicine in Vienna, then had thrown up this “disgusting occupation,” to become a clerk in a wealthy uncle’s counting-house. From this, he had drifted into journalism, and finally, at the instigation of Hans von Bullow, to music; he had been for two and a half years with Bullow, on travel, and in Hamburg, and was at present in Leipzig solely to have his “fingers put in order.” His plans for the future were many, and widely divergent. At one time, a musical career tempted him irresistibly; every one but Schwarz–this finger-machine, this generator of living metronomes–believed that he could make a name for himself as a player of Chopin. At other times, and more often, he contemplated retiring from the world and entering a monastery. He spoke with a morbid horror–yet as if the idea of it fascinated him–of the publicity of the concert-platform, and painted in glowing colours a monastery he knew of, standing on a wooded hill, not far from Vienna. He had once spent several weeks there, recovering from an illness, and the gardens, the trimly bedded flowers, the glancing sunlight in the utter silence of the corridors, were things he could not forget. He had lain day for day on a garden-bench, reading Novalis, and it still seemed to him that the wishless happiness of those days was the greatest he had known.

Beside this, Maurice’s account of himself sounded tame and unimportant; he felt, too, that the circumstances of English life were too far removed from his companion’s sphere, for the latter to be able to understand them.

On waking next morning, Maurice recalled the incidents of the evening with a smile; felt a touch of warmth at the remembrance of the moment when he had held Krafft’s hand in his; then classed the whole episode as strained, and dismissed it from his mind. He had just shut the piano, after a busy forenoon, when Krafft burst in, his cheeks pink with haste and excitement. He had discovered a room to let, in the house he lived in, and nothing would satisfy him but that Maurice should come instantly to see it. Laughing at his eagerness, Maurice put forward his reasons for preferring to remain where he was. But Krafft would take no denial, and not wishing to hurt his feelings, Maurice gave way, and agreed at least to look at the room.

It was larger and more cheerful than his own, and had also, a convenient alcove for the bedstead; and after inspecting it, Maurice felt willing to expend the extra marks it cost. They withdrew to Krafft’s room to come to a decision. There, however, they found Avery Hill, who, as soon as she heard what they contemplated, put a veto on it. Growing pale, as she always did where others would have flushed, she said: “It is an absurd idea–sheer nonsense! I won’t have it, understand that! Pray, excuse me,” she continued to Maurice, speaking in a more friendly tone than she had yet used to him, “but you must not listen to him. It is just one of his whims–nothing more. In less than a week, you would wish yourself away again. You have no idea how changeable he is–how impossible to live with.”

Maurice hastened to reassure her. Krafft did not speak; he stood at the window, with his back to them, his forehead pressed against the glass.

So Maurice continued to live in the BRAUSTRASSE, under the despotic rule of Frau Krause, who took every advantage of his good-nature. But after this, not a day passed without his seeing Krafft; the latter sought him out on trivial pretexts. Maurice hardly recognised him: he was gentle, amiable, and amenable to reason; he subordinated himself entirely to Maurice, and laid an ever-increasing weight on his opinion. Maurice became able to wind him round his finger; and the hint of a reproof from him served to throw Krafft into a state of nervous depression. Without difficulty, Maurice found himself to rights in his role of mentor, and began to flatter himself that he would ultimately make of Krafft a decent member of society. As it was, he soon induced his friend to study in a more methodical way; they practised for the same number of hours in the forenoon, and met in the afternoon; and Krafft only sometimes broke through this arrangement, by appearing in the BRAUSTRASSE early in the morning, and, despite remonstrance, throwing himself on the sofa, and remaining there, while Maurice practised. The latter ended by growing accustomed to this whim as to several other things that had jarred on him–such as Krafft’s love for a dirty jest–and overlooked or forgave them. At first embarrassed by the mushroom growth of a friendship he had not invited, he soon grew genuinely attached to Krafft, and missed him when he was absent from him.

Avery Hill could hardly be termed third in the alliance; Maurice’s advent had thrust her into the background, where she kept watch over their doings with her cold, disdainful eye. Maurice was not clear how she regarded his intrusion. Sometimes, particularly when she saw the improvement in Heinrich’s way of life, she seemed to tolerate his presence gladly; at others again, her jealous aversion to him was too open to be overlooked. The jealousy was natural; he was an interloper, and Heinz neglected her shamefully for him; but there was something else behind it, another feeling, which Maurice could not make out. He by no means understood the relationship that existed between his friend and this girl of the stone-grey eyes and stern, red lips. The two lived almost door by door, went in and out of each other’s rooms at all hours, and yet, he had never heard them exchange an affectionate word, or seen a mark of endearment pass between them. Avery’s attachment–if such it could be called–was noticeable only in the many small ways in which she cared for Krafft’s comfort; her manner with him was invariably severe and distant, with the exception of those occasions when a seeming trifle raised in her a burst of the dull, passionate anger, beneath which Krafft shrank. Maurice believed that his friend would be happier away from her; in spite of her fresh colouring, he, Maurice, found her wanting in attraction, nothing that a woman ought to be. But her name was rarely mentioned between them; Krafft was, as a rule, reticent concerning her, and when he did speak of her, it was in a tone of such contempt that Maurice was glad to shirk the subject.

“It’s all she wants,” Krafft had replied, when his companion ventured to take her part. “She wouldn’t thank you to be treated differently. Believe me, women are all alike; they are made to be trodden on. Ill-usage brings out their good points–just as kneading makes dough light. Let them alone, or pamper them, and they spread like a weed, and choke you”–and he quoted a saying about going to women and not forgetting the whip, at which Maurice stood aghast.

“But why, if you despise a person like that–why have her always about you?” he cried, at the end of a flaming plea for woman’s dignity and worth.

Krafft shrugged his shoulders. “I suppose the truth is we are dependent on them–yes, dependent, from the moment we are laid in the cradle. It’s a woman who puts on our first clothes and a woman who puts on our last. But why talk about these things?”–he slipped his arm through Maurice’s. “Tell me about yourself; and when you are tired of talking, I will play.”

It usually ended in his playing. They ranged through the highways and byways of music.

One afternoon–it was a warm, wet, grey day towards the end of August–Maurice found Krafft in a strangely apathetic mood. The weather, this moist warmth, had got on his nerves, he said; he had been unable to settle to anything; was weighed down by a lassitude heavier than iron. When Maurice entered, he was stretched on the sofa, with closed eyes; on his chest slept Wotan, the one-eyed cat, now growing sleek and fat. While Maurice was trying to rally him, Krafft sprang up. With a precipitance that was the extreme opposite of his previous sloth, he lowered both window-blinds, and, lighting two candles, set them on the piano, where they dispersed the immediate darkness, but no more.

“I am going to play TRISTAN to you.”

Maurice had learnt by this time that it was useless to try to thwart Krafft. He laughed and nodded, and having nothing in particular to do, lay down in the latter’s place on the sofa.

Krafft shook his hair back, and began the prelude to the opera in a rapt, ecstatic way, finding in the music an outlet for all his nervousness. At first, he played from memory; when this gave out, he set the piano-score up before him, then forgot it again, and went on playing by heart. Sometimes he sang the different parts, in a light, sweet tenor; sometimes recited them, with dramatic fervour. Only he never ceased to play, never gave his hearer a moment in which to recover himself.

Frau Schulz’s entry with the lamp, and her grumblings at the “UNVERSCHAMTE SPEKTAKEL” passed unheeded. A strength that was more than human seemed to take possession of the frail youth at the piano. Evening crept on afternoon, night on evening, and still he continued, drunk with the most emotional music conceived by a human brain.

Even when hands and fingers could do no more, the frenzy that was in him would not let him rest: he paced the room, and talked–talked for hours, his eyes ablaze. A church-clock struck ten, then half-past, then eleven, and not for a moment was he still; his speech seemed, indeed, to gather impetus as it advanced like a mountain torrent.

Then, all of a sudden, in the middle of a vehement defence of anti-Semitism, to which he had been led by the misdeeds of those “arch-charlatans,” Mendelssohn and Meyerbeer, he stopped short, like a run-down clock, and, falling into a chair before the table, buried his face in his arms. There was silence, the more intense for all that had preceded it. Wotan wakened from sleep, and was heard to stretch his limbs, with a yawn and a sigh. The spell was broken; Maurice, his head in a whirl, rose stiff and cramped from his uncomfortable position on the sofa.

“You rascal, you make one lose all sense of time. And I am starving. I must snatch something at Canitz’s as I go by.”

Krafft started, and raised a haggard face with twitching lips. “You are not going to leave me?–like this?”

Maurice was both hungry and tired–worn out, in fact.

“We will go somewhere in the town,” said Krafft. “And then for a walk. The rain has stopped–look!”

He drew up one of the blinds, and they saw that the stars were shining.

“Yes, but what about to-morrow?–and to-morrow’s work?”

“To-morrow may never come. And to-night is.”

“Those are only words. Do you know the time?”

Krafft turned quickly from the window. “And if I make it a test of the friendship you have professed for me, that you stay here with me to-night?–You can sleep on the sofa.”

“Why on earth get personal?” said Maurice; he could not find his hat, which had fallen in a dark corner. “Heinz, dear boy, be reasonable. Come, give me the house-key–like a good fellow.”

“It’s the first–the only thing, I have asked of you.”

“Nonsense. You have asked dozens.”

Krafft took a few steps towards him, and threw the key on the floor at his feet. Wotan, who was at the door, mewing to be let out, sprang back, in affright.

“Go, go, go!” Krafft cried. “I never want to see you again.”

Earlier than usual the next morning, Maurice returned to set things right, and to laugh with Heinz at their extravagance the night before. But Krafft was not to be seen. From Frau Schulz, who flounced past him in the passage, first with hot water, then with black coffee, Maurice learned that Krafft had been brought home early that morning, in a disgraceful state of intoxication. Frau Schulz still boiled at the remembrance.

“SO ‘N SCHWEIN, SO ‘N SCHWEIN!” she cried. “But this time he goes. I have said it before and, fool that I am, have always let them persuade me. But this is the end. Not a day after the fifteenth will I have him in the house.”

Maurice slipped away.

Two days passed before he saw his friend again. He found him pale and dejected, with reddish, heavy eyes and a sneering smile. He was wholly changed; his words were tainted with the perverse irony, which, at the beginning of their acquaintance, had made his manner so repellent. But now, Maurice was not, at once, frightened away by it; he could not believe Heinrich’s pique was serious, and gave himself trouble to win his friend back. He chid, laughed, rallied, was earnest and apologetic, and all this without being conscious of having done wrong.

“I think you had better leave him alone,” said Avery, after watching his fruitless efforts. “He doesn’t want you.”

It was true; now Krafft had no thought for anyone but Avery. It was Avery here, and Avery there. He called her by a pet name, was anxious for her comfort, and hung affectionately on her arm.–The worst of it was, that he did not seem in the least ashamed of his fickleness.

Maurice made one further attempt to move him, then, hurt and angry, intruded no more. At first, he was chiefly angry. But, gradually, the hurt deepened, and became a sense of injury, which made him avoid the street Krafft lived in, and shun him when they met. He missed him, after the close companionship of the past weeks, and felt as if he had been suddenly deprived of a part of himself. And he would no doubt have missed him more keenly still, if, just at this juncture, his attention had not been engrossed by another and more important matter.

XIII.

The commencement of the new term had just assembled the incoming students to sign their names in the venerable rollbook, when the report spread that Schilsky was willing to play his symphonic poem, ZARATHUSTRA, to those of his friends who cared to hear it. Curiosity swelled the number, and Furst lent his house for the occasion.

“You’ll come, of course,” said the latter to Maurice, as they left Schwarz’s room after their lesson; and Madeleine said the same thing while driving home from the railway-station, where Maurice had met her. She was no more a friend of Schilsky’s than he was, but she certainly intended to be present, to hear what kind of stuff he had turned out.

On the evening of the performance, Maurice and she walked together to the BRANDVORWERKSTRASSE. Madeleine had still much to say. She had returned from her holiday in the best of health and spirits, liberally rewarded for her trouble, and possessed of four new friends, who, no doubt, would all be of use to her when she settled in England again. This was to be her last winter in Leipzig, and she was drawing up detailed plans of work. From now on, she intended to take private lessons from Schwarz, in addition to those she received in the class.

“Even though they do cost ten marks each, it makes him ever so much better disposed towards you.”

She also told him that she had found a letter from Louise waiting for her, in which the latter announced her return for the following week. Louise wrote from England, and all her cry was to be back in Leipzig.

“Of course–now he is here,” commented Madeleine. “You know, I suppose, that he has been travelling with Zeppelin? He has the luck of I don’t know what.”

The Cayhills would be absent till the middle of the month; Maurice had received from Ephie one widely written note, loud in praise of a family of “perfectly sweet Americans,” whom they had learnt to know in Interlaken, but also expressing eagerness to be at home again in “dear old Leipzig.” Dove had arrived a couple of days ago–and here Madeleine laughed.

“He is absolutely shiny with resolution,” she declared. “Mind, Maurice, if he takes you into confidence–as he probably will–you are not on any account to dissuade him from proposing. A snub will do him worlds of good.”

They were not the first to climb the ill-lighted stair that wound up to the Fursts’ dwelling. The entry-door on the fourth storey stood open, and a hum of voices came from the sitting-room. The circular hat-stand in the passage was crowded with motley headgear.

As they passed the kitchen, the door of which was ajar, Frau Furst peeped through the slit, and seeing Maurice, called him in. The coffee-pot was still on the stove; he must sit down and drink a cup of coffee.

“There is plenty of time. Schilsky has not come yet, and I have only this moment sent Adolfchen for the beer.”

Maurice asked her if she were not coming in to hear the music. She laughed good-naturedly at the idea.

“Bless your heart, what should I do in there, among all you young people? No, no, I can hear just as well where I am. When my good husband had his evenings, it was always from the kitchen that I listened.”

Pausing, with a saucepan in one hand, a cloth in the other, she said: “You will hear something good to-night, Herr Guest. Oh, he has talent, great talent, has young Schilsky! This is not the usual work of a pupil. It has form, and it has ideas, and it is new and daring. I know one of the motives from hearing Franz play it,” and she hummed a theme as she replaced on the shelf, the scrupulously cleaned pot. “For such a young man, it is wonderful; but he will do better still, depend upon it, he will.”

Here she threw a hasty glance round the tiny kitchen, at three of the children sitting as still as mice in the corner, laid a finger on her lips, and, bursting with mystery, leaned over the table and asked Maurice if he could keep a secret.

“He is going away,” she whispered.

Maurice stared at her. “Going away? Who is? What do you mean?” he asked, and was so struck by her peculiar manner that he set his cup down untouched.

“Why Schilsky, of course.” She thought his astonishment was disbelief, and nodded confirmingly. “Yes, yes, he is going away. And soon, too.”

“How do you know?” cried Maurice. Sitting back in his chair, he stemmed his hands against the edge of the table, and looked challengingly at Frau Furst.

“Ssh–not so loud,” said the latter. “It’s a secret, a dead secret– though I’m sure I don’t know why. Franz—-“

At this very moment, Franz himself came into the kitchen. He looked distrustfully at his whispering mother.

“Now then, mother, haven’t you got that beer yet?” he demanded. His genial bonhomie disappeared, as if by magic, when he entered his home circle, and he was particularly gruff with this adoring woman.

“GLEICH, FRANZCHEN, GLEICH,” she answered soothingly, and whisked about her work again, with the air of one caught napping.

Maurice followed Furst’s invitation to join the rest of the party.

The folding-doors between the “best room” and the adjoining bedroom had been opened wide, and the guests were distributed over the two rooms. The former was brilliantly lighted by three lamps and two candles, and all the sitting-accommodation the house contained was ranged in a semicircle round the grand piano. Here, not a place was vacant; those who had come late were in the bedroom, making shift with whatever offered. Two girls and a young man, having pushed back the feather-bed, sat on the edge of the low wooden bedstead, with their arms interlaced to give them a better balance. Maurice found Madeleine on a rickety little sofa that stood at the foot of the bed. Dove sat on a chest of drawers next the sofa, his long legs dangling in the air. Beside Madeleine, with his head on her shoulder, was Krafft.

“Oh, there you are,” cried Madeleine. “Well, I did my best to keep the place for you; but it was of no use, as you see. Just sit down, however. Between us, we’ll squeeze him properly.”

Maurice was glad that the room, which was lighted only by one small lamp, was in semi-darkness; for, at the sound of his own voice, it suddenly became clear to him that the piece of gossip Frau Furst had volunteered, had been of the nature of a blow. Schilsky’s departure threatened, in a way he postponed for the present thinking out, to disturb his life; and, in an abrupt need of sympathy, he laid his hand on Krafft’s knee.

“Is it you, old man? What have you been doing with yourself?”

Krafft gave him one of those looks which, in the early days of their acquaintance, had proved so disconcerting–a look of struggling recollection.

“Oh, nothing in particular,” he replied, without hostility, but also without warmth. His mind was not with his words, and Maurice withdrew his hand.

Madeleine leaned forward, dislodging Krafft’s head from its resting-place.

“How long have you two been ‘DU’ to each other?” she asked, and at Maurice’s curt reply, she pushed Krafft from her. “Sit up and behave yourself. One would think you had an evil spirit in you to-night.”

Krafft was nervously excited: bright red spots burnt on his cheeks, his hands twitched, and he jerked forward in his seat and threw himself back again, incessantly.

“No, you are worse than a mosquito,” cried Madeleine, losing patience. “Anyone would think you were going to play yourself. And he will be as cool as an iceberg. The sofa won’t stand it, Heinz. If you can’t stop fidgeting, get up.”

He had gone, before she finished speaking; for a slight stir in the next room made them suppose for a moment that Schilsky was arriving. Afterwards, Krafft was to be seen straying about, with his hands in his pockets; and, on observing his rose-pink cheeks and tumbled curly hair, Madeleine could not refrain from remarking: “He ought to have been a girl.”

The air was already hot, by reason of the lamps, and the many breaths, and the firmly shut double-windows. The clamour for beer had become universal by the time Adolfchen arrived with his arms full of bottles. As there were not enough glasses to go round, every two or three persons shared one between them–a proceeding that was carried out with much noisy mirth. Above all other voices was to be heard that of Miss Jensen, who, in a speckled yellow dress, with a large feather fan in her hand, sat in the middle of the front row of seats. It was she who directed how the beer should be apportioned; she advised a few late-comers where they would still find room, and engaged Furst to place the lights on the piano to better advantage. Next her, a Mrs. Lautenschlager, a plump little American lady, with straight yellow hair which hung down on her shoulders, was relating to her neighbour on the other side, in a tone that could be clearly heard in both rooms, how she had “discovered” her voice.

“I come to Schwarz, last fall,” she said shaking back her hair, and making effective use of her babyish mouth; “and he thinks no end of me. But the other week I was sick, and as I lay in bed, I sung some–just for fun. And my landlady–she’s a regular singer herself–who was fixing up the room, she claps her hands together and says: ‘My goodness me! Why YOU have a voice!’ That’s what put it in my head, and I went to Sperling to hear what he’d got to say. He was just tickled to death, I guess he was, and he’s going to make something dandy of it, so I stop long enough. I don’t know what my husband’ll say though. When I wrote him I was sick, he says: ‘Come home and be sick at home’–that’s what he says.”

Miss Jensen could not let pass the opportunity of breaking a lance for her own master, the Swede, and of cutting up Sperling’s method, which she denounced as antiquated. She made quite a little speech, in the course of which she now and then interrupted herself to remind Furst–who, was as soft as a pudding before her–of something he had forgotten to do, such as snuffing the candles or closing the door.

“Just let me hear your scale, will you?” she said patronisingly to Mrs. Lautenschlager. The latter, nothing loath, stuck out her chin, opened her mouth, and, for a short time, all other noises were drowned in a fine, full volume of voice.

On their sofa, Madeleine and Maurlee sat in silence, pretending to listen to Dove, who was narrating his journey. Madeleine was out of humour; she tapped the floor, and had a crease in her forehead. As for Maurice, he was in such poor spirits that she could not but observe it.

“Why are you so quiet? Is anything the matter?”

He shook his head, without speaking. His vague sense of impending misfortune had crystallised into a definite thought; he knew now what it signified. If Schilsky went away from Leipzig, Louise would probably go, too, and that would be the end of everything.

“I represented to him,” he heard Dove saying, “that I had seen the luggage with my own eyes at Flushing. What do you think he answered? He looked me up and down, and said: ‘ICH WERDE TELEGRAPHIEREN UND ERKUNDIGUNGEN EINZIEHEN.’ Now, do you think if you said to an English station-master: ‘Sir, I saw the luggage with my own eyes,’ he would not believe you? No, in my opinion, the whole German railway-system needs revision. Would you believe it, we did not make fifty kilometers in the hour, and yet our engine broke down before Magdeburg?”

So this would be the end; the end of foolish dreams and weak hopes, which he had never put into words even to himself, which had never properly existed, and yet had been there, nevertheless, a mass of gloriously vague perhapses. The end was at hand–an end before there had been any beginning.

“. . . the annoyance of the perpetual interruptions,” went on the voice on the other side. “A lady who was travelling in the same compartment–a very pleasant person, who was coming over to be a teacher in a school in Dresden–I have promised to show her our lions when she visits Leipzig: well, as I was saying, she was quite alarmed the first time he entered in that way, and it took me some time, I assure you, to make her believe that this was the German method of revising tickets.”

The break occasioned by the arrival of the beer had been of short duration, and the audience was growing impatient; at the back of the room, some one began to stamp his feet; others took it up. Furst perspired with anxiety, and made repeated journeys to the stair-head, to see if Schilsky were not coming. The latter was almost an hour late by now, and jests, bald and witty, were made at his expense. Some one offered to take a bet that he had fallen asleep and forgotten the appointment, and at this, one of the girls on the bed, a handsome creature with bold, prominent eyes, related an anecdote to her neighbours, concerning Schilsky’s powers of sleep. All three exploded with laughter. In a growing desire to be asked to play, Boehmer had for some time hung about the piano, and was now just about to drop, as if by accident, upon the stool, when the cry of: “No Bach!” was raised–Bach was Boehmer’s specialty–and re-echoed, and he retired red and discomfited to his Place in a corner of the room, where his companion, a statuesque little English widow, made biting observations on the company’s behaviour. The general rowdyism was at its height, when some one had the happy idea that Krafft should sing them his newest song. At this, there was a unanimous shriek of approval, and several hands dragged Krafft to the piano. But himself the wildest of them all, he needed no forcing. Flinging himself down on the seat, he preluded wildly in imitation of Rubinstein. His hearers sat with their mouths open, a fixed smile on their faces, laughter ready in their throats, and only Madeleine was coolly contemptuous.

“Tom-fool!” she said in a low voice.

Krafft was confidently expected to burst into one of those songs for which he was renowned. Few of his friends were able to sing them, and no one but himself could both sing and play them simultaneously: they were a monstrous, standing joke. Instead of this, however, he turned, winked at his audience, and began a slow, melancholy ditty, with a recurring refrain. He was not allowed to finish the first verse; a howl of disapproval went up; his hearers hooted, jeered and stamped.

“Sick cats!”

“Damn your ‘WENIG SONNE!'”–this was the refrain.

“Put your head in a bag!”

“Pity he drinks!”

“Give us one of the rousers–the rou . . . sers!”

Krafft himself laughed unbridledly. “DAS ICH SPRICHT!”–he announced. “In C sharp major.”

There was a hush of anticipation, in which Dove, stopping his BRETZEL half-way to his mouth, was heard to say in his tone of measured surprise: “C sharp major! Why, that is—-“

The rest was drowned in the wild chromatic passages that Krafft sent up and down the piano with his right hand, while his left followed with full-bodied chords, each of which exceeded the octave. Before, however, there was time to laugh, this riot ceased, and became a mournful cadence, to the slowly passing harmonies of which, Krafft sang:

I am weary of everything that is, under the sun. I sicken at the long lines of rain, which are black against the sky; They drip, for a restless heart, with the drip of despair: For me, winds must rage, trees bend, and clouds sail stormily.

The whirlwind of the prelude commenced anew; the chords became still vaster; the player swayed from side to side, like a stripling-tree in a storm. Madeleine said, “Tch!” in disgust, but the rest of the company, who had only waited for this, burst into peals of laughter; some bent double in their seats, some leant back with their chins in the air. Even Dove smiled. Just, however, as those whose sense of humour was most highly developed, mopped their faces with gestures of exhaustion, and assured their neighbours that they “could not, really could not laugh any more,” Furst entered and flapped his hands.

“Here he comes!”

A sudden silence fell, broken only by a few hysterical giggles from the ladies, and by a frivolous American, who cried: “Now for ALSO SCHRIE ZENOPHOBIA!” Krafft stopped playing, but remained sitting at the piano, wiping down the keys with his handkerchief.

Schilsky came in, somewhat embarrassed by the lull which had succeeded the hubbub heard in the passage, but wholly unconcerned at the lateness of the hour: except in matters of practical advancement, time did not exist for him. As soon as he appeared, the two ladies in the front row began to clap their hands; the rest of the company followed their example, then, in spite of Furst’s efforts to prevent it, rose and crowded round him. Miss Jensen and her friend made themselves particularly conspicuous. Mrs Lauterischlager had an infatuation for the young man, of which she made no secret; she laid her hand caressingly on his coat-sleeve, and put her face as near his as propriety admitted.

“Disgusting, the way those women go on with him!” said Madeleine. “And what is worse, he likes it.”

Schilsky listened to the babble of compliments with that mixture of boyish deference and unequivocal superiority, which made him so attractive to women. He was too good-natured to interrupt them and free himself, and would have stood as long as they liked, if Furst had not come to the rescue and led him to the piano. Schilsky laid his hand affectionately on Krafft’s shoulder, and Krafft sprang up in exaggerated surprise. The audience took its seats again; the thick manuscript-score was set up on the music-rack, and the three young men at the piano had a brief disagreement with one another about turning the leaves: Krafft was bent on doing it, and Schilsky objected, for Krafft had a way of forgetting what he was at in the middle of a page. Krafft flushed, cast an angry look at his friend, and withdrew, in high dudgeon, to a corner.

Standing beside the piano, so turned to those about him that the two on the sofa in the next room only saw him sideways, and ill at that, Schilsky gave a short description of his work. He was nervous, which aggravated his lisp, and he spoke so rapidly and in such a low voice that no one but those immediately in front of him, could understand what he said. But it did not matter in the least; all present had come only to hear the music; they knew and cared nothing about Zarathustra and his spiritual development; and one and all waited impatiently for Schilsky to stop speaking. The listeners in the bedroom—-merely caught disjointed words–WERDEGANG, NOTSCHREI, TARANTELN–but not one was curious enough even to lean forward in his seat. Madeleine made sarcastic inward comments on the behaviour of the party.

“It’s perfectly clear to you, I suppose,” she could not refrain from observing as, at the finish, Dove sagely wagged his head in agreement.

It transpired that there was an ode to be sung before the last section of the composition, and a debate ensued who, should sing it. The two ladies in the front had quite a little quarrel–without knowing anything about the song–as to which of their voices would best suit it. Schilsky was silent for a moment, tapping his fingers, then said suddenly: “Come on, Heinz,” and looked at Krafft. But the latter, who was standing morose, with folded arms, did not move. He had a dozen reasons why he should not sing; he had a cold, was hoarse, was out of practice, could not read the music from sight.

“Good Heavens, what a fool Heinz is making of himself tonight!” said Madeleine.

But Schilsky thumped his fist on the lid, and said, if Krafft did not sing it, no one should; and that was the end of the matter. Krafft was pulled to the piano.

Schilsky took his seat, and, losing his nervousness as soon as he touched the keys, preluded firmly and easily, with his large, white hands. Now, every one leaned forward to see him better; especially the ladies threw themselves into positions from which they could watch hair and hands, and the slender, swaying figure.

“Isn’t he divine?” said the bold-eyed girl on the bed, in a loud whisper, and hung upon her companion’s neck in an ecstatic attitude.

After the diversity of noises which had hitherto interfered with his thinking connectedly, Maurice welcomed the continuous sound of the music, which went on without a break. He sat in a listening attitude, shading his eyes with his hand. Through his fingers, he surreptitiously watched the player. He had never before had an opportunity of observing Schilsky so closely, and, with a kind of blatant generosity, he now pointed out to himself each physical detail that he found prepossessing in the other, every feature that was likely to attract–in the next breath, only to struggle with his honest opinion that the composer was a slippery, loose-jointed, caddish fellow, who could never be proved to be worthy of Louise. But he was too down-hearted at what he had learnt in the course of the evening, to rise to any active feeling of dislike.

Intermittently he heard, in spite of himself, something of Schilsky’s music; but he was not in a frame of mind to understand or to retain any impression of it. He was more effectively jerked out of his preoccupation by single spoken words, which, from time to time, struck his ear: this was Furst, who, in the absence of a programme, announced from his seat beside Schilsky, the headings of the different sections of the work: WERDEGANG; SEILTANZER–here Maurice saw Dove conducting with head and hand–NOTSCHREI; SCHWERMUT; TARANTELN–and here again, but vaguely, as if at a distance, he heard suppressed laughter. But he was thoroughly roused when Krafft, picking up a sheet of music and coming round to the front of the piano, began to sing DAS TRUNKENE LIED. By way of introduction, the low F in the bass of F minor sounded persistently, at syncopated intervals; Schilsky inclined his head, and Krafft sang, in his sweet, flute-like voice:

Oh, Mensch! Gieb Acht!
Was spricht die tiefe Mitternacht?
“Ich schlief, ich schlief,
Aus tiefem Schlaf bin ich erwacht:
Die Welt ist tief,
Und tiefer als der Tag gedacht.”

–the last phrase of which was repeated by the accompaniment, a semitone higher.

Tief ist ihr Weh,
Lust–tiefer noch als Herzeleid:

As far as this, the voice had been supported by simple, full-sounding harmonies. Now, from out the depths, still of F minor, rose a hesitating theme, which seemed to grope its way: in imagination, one heard it given out by the bass strings; then the violas reiterated it, and dyed it purple; voice and violins sang it together; the high little flutes carried it up and beyond, out of reach, to a half close.

Weh spricht: vergeh!

Suddenly and unexpectedly, there entered a light yet mournful phrase in F major, which was almost a dance-rhythm, and seemed to be a small, frail pleading for something not rightly understood.

Doch alle Lust will Ewigkeit,
Will tiefe, tiefe Ewigkeit.

The innocent little theme passed away, and the words were sung again to a stern and fateful close in D flat major.

The concluding section of the work returned to these motives, developed them, gathered them together, grouped them and interchanged them, in complicated thermatic counterpoint. Schilsky was barely able to cope with the difficulties of the score; he exerted himself desperately, laboured with his head and his whole body, and surmounted sheerly unplayable parts with the genial slitheriness that is the privilege of composers.

When, at last, he crashed to a close and wiped his face in exhaustion, there was a deafening uproar of applause. Loud cries were uttered and exclamations of enthusiasm; people rose from their seats and crowded round the piano to congratulate the player. Mrs. Lautenschlager could not desist from kissing his hand. A tall, thin Russian girl in spectacles, who had assiduously taken notes throughout, asked in a loud voice, and her peculiar, hoppy German, for information about the orchestration. What use had he made of the cymbals? She trusted a purely Wagnerian one. Schilsky hastened to reopen the score, and sat himself to answer the question earnestly and at length.

“Come, Maurice, let us go,” said Madeleine, rising and shaking the creases from her skirt. “There will be congratulations enough. He won’t miss ours.”

Maurice had had an idea of lingering till everybody else had gone, on the chance of picking up fresh facts. But he was never good at excuses. So they slipped out into the passage, followed by Dove; but while the latter was looking for his hat, Madeleine pulled Maurice down the stairs.

“Quick, let us go!” she whispered; and, as they heard him coming after them, she drew her companion down still further, to the cellar flight, where they remained hidden until Dove had passed them, and his steps had died away in the street.

“We should have had nothing but his impressions and opinions all the way home,” she said, as they emerged. “He was bottled up from having to keep quiet so long–I saw it in his face. And I couldn’t stand it to-night. I’m in a bad temper, as you may have observed–or perhaps you haven’t.”

No, he had not noticed it.

“Well, you would have, if you hadn’t been so taken up with yourself. What on earth is the matter with you?”

He feigned. surprise: and they walked in silence down one street and into the next. Then she spoke again. “Do you know–but you’re sure not to know that either–you gave me a nasty turn to-night?”

“I?” His surprise was genuine this time.

“Yes, you–when I heard you say ‘DU’ to Heinz.”

He looked at her in astonishment; but she was not in a hurry to continue. They walked another street-length, and all she said was: “How refreshing the air is after those stuffy rooms!”

As they turned a corner however, she made a fresh start.

“I think it’s rather hard on me,” she said, and laughed as she spoke. “Here am I again, having to lecture you! The fact is, I suppose, one’s METIER clings to one, in spite of oneself. But there must be something about you, too, Maurice Guest, that makes one want to do it–want to look after you, so to speak–as if you couldn’t be trusted to take care of yourself. Well, it disturbed me to-night, to see how intimate you and Heinz have got.”

“Is that all? Why on earth should that trouble you? And anyhow,” he added, “the whole affair came about without any wish of mine.”

“How?” she demanded; and when he had told her: “And since then?”

He went into detail, coolly, without the resentment he had previously felt towards Krafft.

“And that’s all?”

“Isn’t it enough–for a fellow to go on in that way?”

“And you feel aggrieved?”

“No, not now. At first I was rather sore, though, for Heinz is an interesting fellow, and we were very thick for a time.”

“Yes, of course–until Schilsky comes back. As soon as he appears on the scene, Master Heinz gives you the cold shoulder. Or perhaps you didn’t know that Heinz is the attendant spirit of that heaven-born genius?”

Maurice did not reply, and when she spoke again, it was with renewed seriousness. “Believe me, Maurice, he is no friend for you. It’s not only that you ought to be above letting yourself be treated in this way, but Heinz’s friendship won’t do you any good. He belongs to a bad set here–and Schilsky, too. If you were long with Heinz, you would be bound to get drawn into it, and then it would be good-bye to anything you might have done–to work and success. No, take my advice–it’s sincerely meant–and steer clear of Heinz.”

Maurice smiled to himself at her womanly idea of Krafft leading him to perdition. “But you’re fond of him yourself, Madeleine,” he said. “You can’t help liking him either.”

“I daresay I can’t. But that is quite a different matter–quite;” and as if more than enough had now been said, she abruptly left the subject.

Before going home that night, Maurice made the old round by way of the BRUDERSTRASSE, and stood and looked up at the closed windows behind which Louise lived. The house was dark, and as still as was the deserted street. Only the Venetian blinds seemed to be faintly alive; the outer windows, removed for the summer, had not yet been replaced, and a mild wind flapped the blinds, just as it swayed the tops of the trees in the opposite garden. There was a breath of autumn in the air. He told himself aloud, in the nightly silence, that she was going away–as if by repeating the words, he might ultimately grow used to their meaning. The best that could be hoped for was that she would not go immediately, but would remain in Leipzig for a few weeks longer. Then a new fear beset him. What if she never came back again?–if she had left the place quietly, of set purpose?–if these windows were closed for good and all? A dryness invaded his throat at the possibility, and on the top of this evening of almost apathetic resignation to the inevitable, the knowledge surged up in him that all he asked was to be allowed to see her just once more. Afterwards, let come what might. Once again, he must stand face to face with her–must stamp a picture of her on his brain, to carry with him for ever.

For ever!–And through his feverish sleep ran, like a thread, the words he had heard Krafft sing, of an eternity that was deep and dreamless, a joy without beginning or end.

Madeleine had waved her umbrella at him. He crossed the road to where she was standing in rain-cloak and galoshes. She wished to tell him that the date of her playing in the ABENDUNTERHALTUNG had been definitely fixed. About to go, she said:

“Louise is back–did you know?”

Of course he knew, though he did not tell her so–knew almost the exact hour at which the blinds had been drawn up, the windows opened, and a flower-pot, in a gaudy pink paper, put out on the sill.

Not many days after this, he came upon Louise herself. She was standing talking, at a street-corner, to the shabby little Englishman, Eggis, with whom she had walked the FOYER of the theatre. Maurice was about to bow and pass by, but she smiled and held out her hand.

“You are back, too, then? To-day I am meeting all my friends.”

She had fur about her neck, although the weather was not really cold, and her face rose out of this setting like a flower from its cup.

This meeting, and the few cordial words she had spoken, helped him over the days that followed. Sometimes, while he waited for the blow to fall, his daily life grew very unimportant; things that had hitherto interested him, now went past like shadows; he himself was a mere automaton. But sometimes, too, and especially after he had seen Louise, and touched her living hand, he wondered whether he were not perhaps tormenting himself unnecessarily. Nothing more had come to light; no one had hinted by a word at Schilsky’s departure; it might yet prove to be all a mistake.

Then, however, he received a postcard from Madeleine, saying that she had something interesting to tell him. He went too early, and spent a quarter of an hour pacing her room. When she entered, she threw him a look, and, before she had finished taking off her wraps, said:

“Maurice, I have a piece of news for you. Schilsky is going away.”

He nodded; his throat was dry.

“Why, you don’t mean to say you knew?” she cried, and paused half-way out of her jacket.

Maurice went to the window, and stood with his back to her. In one of the houses opposite, at a window on the same level, a girl was practising the violin; his eyes followed the mechanical movements of the bow.

He cleared his throat. “Do you–Is it likely–I mean, do you think?—-“

Madeleine understood him. “Yes, I do. Louise won’t stay here a day longer than he does; I’m sure of that.”

But otherwise she knew no more than Maurice; and she did not offer to detain him, when, a few minutes later, he alleged a pressing appointment. Madeleine was annoyed, and showed it; she had come in with the intention of being kind to him, of encouraging him, and discussing the matter sympathetically, and it now turned out that not only had he known it all the time, but had also kept it a secret from her. She did not like underhand ways, especially in people whom she believed she knew inside out.

Now that the pledge of secrecy had been removed from him, Maurice felt that he wanted facts; and, without thinking more about it than if he had been there the day before, he climbed the stairs that led to Krafft’s lodging.

He found him at supper; Avery was present, too, and on the table sat Wotan, who was being regaled with strips of skin off the sausage. Krafft greeted Maurice with a touch of his former effusiveness; for he was in a talkative mood, and needed an audience. At his order, Avery put an extra plate on the table, and Maurice had to share their meal. It was not hard for him to lead Krafft round to the desired subject. It seemed that one of the masters in the Conservatorium had expressed a very unequivocal opinion of Schilsky’s talents as a composer, and Krafft was now sarcastic, now merry, at this critic’s expense. Maurice laid down his knife, and, in the first break, asked abruptly: “When does he go?”

“Go?–who?” said Krafft indifferently, tickling Wotan’s nose with a piece of skin which he held out of reach.

“Who?–why, Schilsky, of course.”

It sounded as if another than he had said the words: they were so short and harsh. The plate Avery was holding fell to the floor. Krafft sat back in his chair, and stared at Maurice, with a face that was all eyes.

“You knew he was going away?–or didn’t you?” asked Maurice in a rough voice. “Every one knows. The whole place knows.”

Krafft laughed. “The whole place knows: every one knows,” he repeated. “Every one, yes–every one but me. Every one but me, who had most right to know. Yes, I alone had the right; for no one has loved him as I have.”

He rose from the table, knocking over his chair. “Or else it is not true?”

“Yes, it is true. Then you didn’t know?” said Maurice, bewildered by the outburst he had evoked.

“No, we didn’t know.” It was Avery who spoke. She was on her knees, picking up the pieces of the plate with slow, methodical fingers.

Krafft stood hesitating. Then he went to the piano, opened it, adjusted the seat, and made all preparations for playing. But with his fingers ready on the keys, he changed his mind and, instead, laid his arms on the folded rack and his head on his arms. He did not stir again, and a long silence followed. The only sound that was to be heard came from Wotan, who, sitting on his haunches on a corner of the table, washed the white fur of his belly with an audible swish.

XIV.

Whistling to him to stop, Furst ran the length of a street-block after Maurice, as the latter left the Conservatorium.

“I say, Guest,” he said breathlessly, on catching up with him. “Look here, I just wanted to tell you, you must be sure and join us to-night. We are going to give Schilsky a jolly send-off.”

They stood at the corner of the WACHTERSTRASSE; it was a blowy day. Maurice replied evasively, with his eyes on the unbound volume of Beethoven that Furst was carrying; its tattered edges moved in the wind.

“When does he go?” he asked, without any show of concern.

Furst looked warily round him, and dropped his voice. “Well, look here, Guest, I don’t mind telling you,” he said; he was perspiring from his run, and dried his neck and face. “I don’t mind telling you; you won’t pass it on; for he has his reasons–family or domestic reasons, if one may say so, tra-la-la!”–he winked, and nudged Maurice with his elbow–“for not wanting it to get about. It’s deuced hard on him that it should have leaked out at all. I don’t know how it happened; for I was mum, ‘pon my honour, I was.”

“Yes. And when does he go?” repeated his hearer with the same want of interest.

“To-morrow morning early, by the first train.”

Now to be rid of him! But it was never easy to get away from Furst, and since Maurice had declared his intention of continuing to take lessons from him, as good as impossible. Furst was overpowering in his friendliness, and on this particular occasion, there was no escape for Maurice before he had promised to make one of the party that was to meet that night, at a restaurant in the town. Then he bluffly alleged an errand in the PLAGWITZERSTRASSE, and went off in an opposite direction to that which his companion had to take.

As soon as Furst was out of sight, he turned into the path that led to the woods. Overhead, the sky was a monotonous grey expanse, and a soft, moist wind drove in gusts, before which, on the open meadow-land, he bent his head. It was a wind that seemed heavy with unfallen rain; a melancholy wind, as the day itself was melancholy, in its faded colours, and cloying mildness. With his music under his arm, Maurice walked to the shelter of the trees. Now that he had learnt the worst, a kind of numbness came over him; he had felt so intensely in the course of the past week that, now the crisis was there, he seemed destitute of feeling.

His feet bore him mechanically to his favourite seat, and here he remained, with his head in his hands, his eyes fixed on the trodden gravel of the path. He had to learn, once and for all, that, by tomorrow, everything would be over; for, notwithstanding the wretchedness of the past days, he was as far off as ever from understanding. But he was loath to begin; he sat in a kind of torpor, conscious only of the objects his eyes rested on: some children had built a make-believe house of pebbles, with a path leading up to the doorway, and at this he gazed, estimating the crude architectural ideas that had occurred to the childish builders. He felt the wind in his hair, and listened to the soothing noise it made, high above his head. But gradually overcoming this physical dullness, his mind began to work again. With a sudden vividness, he saw himself as he had walked these very woods, seven months before; he remembered the brilliant colouring of the April day, and the abundance of energy that had possessed him. Then, on looking into the future, all his thoughts had been of strenuous endeavour and success. Now, success was a word like any other, and left him cold.

For a long time, in place of passing on to his real preoccupation, he considered this, brooding over the change that had come about in him. Was it, he asked himself, because he had so little whole-hearted endurance, that when once a thing was within his grasp, that grasp slackened? Was it that he was able to make the effort required for a leap, then, the leap over, could not right himself again? He believed that the slackening interest, the inability to fix his attention, which he had had to fight against of late, must have some such deeper significance; for his whole nature–the inherited common sense of generations–rebelled against tracing it back to the day on which he had seen a certain face for the first time. It was too absurd to be credible that because a slender, dark-eyed girl had suddenly come within his range of vision, his life should thus lose form and purpose–incredible and unnatural as well–and, in his present mood, he would have laughed at the suggestion that this was love. To his mind, love was something frank and beautiful, made for daylight and the sun; whereas his condition was a source of mortification to him. To love, without any possible hope of return; to love, knowing that the person you loved regarded you with less than indifference, and, what was worse, that this person was passionately attached to another man–no, there was something indelicate about it, at which his blood revolted. It was the kind of thing that it suited poets to make tragedies of, but it did not–should not–happen in sober, daily life. And if, as it seemed in this case, it was beyond mortal’s power to prevent it, then the only fitting thing to do was promptly to make an end. And because, over the approach of this end, he suffered, he now called himself hard names. What had he expected? Had he really believed that matters could always dally on, in this pleasant, torturous way? Would he always have been content to be third party, and miserable outsider? No; the best that could happen to him was now happening; let the coming day once be past, let a very few weeks have run their course, and the parting would have lost its sting; he would be able to look back, regretfully no doubt, but as on something done with, irrecoverable. Then he would apply himself to his work with all his heart; and it would be possible to think of her, and remember her, calmly. If once an end were put to these daily chances of seeing her, which perpetually fanned his unrest, all would go well.

And yet . . . did he close his eyes and let her face rise up before him–her sweet, white face, with the unfathomable eyes, and pale, sensuous mouth–he was shaken by an emotion that knocked his resolutions as flat as a breath knocks a house of cards. It was not love, nor anything to do with love, this he could have sworn to: it was merely the strange physical effect her presence, or the remembrance of her presence, had had upon him, from the first day on: a tightening of all centres, a heightening of all faculties, an intense hope, and as intense a despair. And in this moment, he confessed to himself that he would have been over-happy to live on just as he had been doing, if only sometimes he might see her. He