"Joke!--who is joking?" she asked, and raised her eyebrows so high that

her forehead was filled with wrinkles. "Nothing was further from my

thoughts."

Maurice hesitated, and stood undecided, holding the doorhandle. Then,

following an impulse, he turned and sat down again. "Madeleine, tell

me--I wouldn't ask anyone but you--what sort of a fellow IS this

Schilsky?"

"What sort of a fellow?" She laughed sarcastically. "To be quite

truthful, Maurice, the best fiddler the Con. has turned out for years."

"Now you're joking again. As if I didn't know that. Everyone says the

same."

"You want his moral character? Well, I'll be equally candid. Or, at

least, I'll give you my opinion of him. It's another superlative. Just

as I consider him the best violinist, I also hold him to be the

greatest scamp in the place--and I've no objection to use a stronger

word if you like. I wouldn't take his hand, no, not if he offered it to

me. The last time he was in this room, about six months ago, he--well,

let us say he borrowed, without a word to me, five or six marks that

were lying loose on the writing-table. Yes, it's a fact," she repeated,

complacently eyeing Maurice's dismay. "Otherwise?--oh, otherwise, he

was born, I think, with a silver spoon in his mouth. He has one piece

of luck after another. Zeppelin discovered him ten years ago, on a

concert-tour--his father is a smith in Warsaw--and brought him to

Leipzig. He was a prodigy, then, and a rich Jewish banker took him up,

and paid for his education; and when he washed his hands of him in

disgust, Schaefele's wife--Schaefele is head of the HANDELVEREIN, you

know--adopted him as a son--some people say as more than a son, for,

though she was nearly forty, she was perfectly crazy over him, and

behaved as foolishly as any of the dozens of silly girls who have lost

their hearts to him."

"I suppose they are engaged," said Maurice after a pause, speaking out

of his own thoughts.

"Do you?" she asked with mild humour. "I really never asked them.--But

this is just another example of his good fortune. When he has worn out

every one else's patience, through his dishonest extravagance, he picks

up a rich wife, who is not averse to supporting him before marriage."

Maurice looked at her reproachfully. "I wonder you care to repeat such

gossip."

"It's not gossip, Maurice. Every one knows it. Louise makes no mystery

of her doings--doesn't care that much what people say. While as for

him--well, it's enough to know it's Schilsky. The thing is an open

secret. Listen, now, and I'll tell you how it began--just to let you

judge for yourself what kind of a girl you have to deal with in Louise,

and how Schilsky behaves when he wants a thing, and whether such a pair

think a formal engagement necessary to their happiness. When Louise

came here, a year and a half ago, Schilsky was away somewhere with

Zeppelin, and didn't get back till a couple of months afterwards. As I

said, I knew Louise pretty well at that time; she had got herself into

trouble with--but that's neither here nor there. Well, my lord

returns--he himself tells how it happened. It was a Thursday evening,

and a Radius Commemoration was going on at the Con. He went in late,

and stood at the back of the hall. Louise was there, too, just before

him, and, from the first minute he saw her, he couldn't take his eyes

off her--others who were by say, too, he seemed perfectly fascinated.

No one can stare as rudely as Schilsky, and he ended by making her so

uncomfortable that she couldn't bear it any longer, and went out of the

hall. He after her, and it didn't take him an hour to find out all

about her. The next evening, at an ABEND, they were both there again it

was just like Louise to go!--and the same thing was repeated. She left

again before it was over, he followed, and this time found her in one

of the side corridors; and there--mind you, without a single word

having passed between them!--he took her in his arms and kissed her,

kissed her soundly, half a dozen times--though they had never once

spoken to each other: he boasts of it to this day. That same

evening----"

"Don't, Madeleine--please, don't say any more! I don't care to hear

it," broke in Maurice. He had flushed to the roots of his hair, at some

points of resemblance to his own case, then grown pale again, and now

he waved his arm meaninglessly in the air. "He is a scoundrel,

a--a----" But he recognised that he could not condemn one without the

other, and stopped short.

"My dear boy, if I don't tell you, other people will. And at least you

know I mean well by you. Besides," she went on, not without a touch of

malice as she eyed him sitting there, spoiling the leaves of a book.

"Besides, I may as well show you, how you have to treat Louise, if you

want to make an impression on her. You call him a scoundrel, but what

of her? Believe me, Maurice," she said more seriously, "Louise is not a

whit too good for him; they were made for each other. And of course he

will marry her eventually, for the sake of her, money "--here she

paused and looked deliberately at him--"if not for her own."

This time there was no mistaking the meaning of her words.

"Madeleine!"

He rose from his seat with such force that the table tilted.

But Madeleine did not falter. "I told you already, you know, that

Louise doesn't care what is said about her. As soon as this unfortunate

affair began, she threw up the rooms she was in at the time, and moved

nearer the TALSTRASSE--where he lives. Rumour has it also that she

provided herself with an accommodating landlady, who can be blind and

deaf when necessary."

"How CAN you repeat such atrocious scandal?"

He stared at her, in incredulous dismay. Her words were so many arrows,

the points of which remained sticking in him.

She shrugged her shoulders. "Your not believing it doesn't affect the

truth of the story, Maurice. It was the talk of the place when it

happened. And you may despise rumour as you will, my experience is, a

report never springs up that hasn't some basis of fact to go

on--however small."

He choked back, with an effort, the eloquent words that came to his

lips; of what use was it to make himself still more ridiculous in her

eyes? His hat had fallen to the floor; he picked it up, and brushed it

on his sleeve, without knowing what he did. "Oh, well, of course, if

you think that," he said as coolly as he was able, "nothing I could say

would make any difference. Every one is free to his opinions, I

suppose. But, all the same, I must say, Madeleine"--he grew hot in

spite of himself. "You have been her friend, you say; you have known

her intimately; and yet just because she ... she cares for this fellow

in such a way that she sets caring for him above being cautious--why,

not one woman in a thousand would have the courage for that sort of

thing! It needs courage, not to mind what people--no, what your friends

imagine, and how falsely they interpret what you do. Besides, one has

only to look at her to see how absurd it is. That face and--I don't

know her, Madeleine; I've never spoken to her, and never may, yet I am

absolutely certain that what is said about her isn't true. So certain

that--But after all, if this is what you think about ... about it, then

all I have to say is, we had better not discuss the subject again. It

does no good, and we should never be of the same opinion."

Not without embarrassment, now that he had said his say, he turned to

the door. But Madeleine was not in the least angry. She gave him her

hand, and said, with a smile, yet gravely, too: "Agreed, Maurice! We

will not speak of Louise again."

V.

He shunned Madeleine for days after this. He was morose and unhappy,

and brooded darkly over the baseness of wagging tongues. For the first

time in his life he had come into touch with slander, that invisible

Hydra, and straightway it seized upon the one person to whom he was not

indifferent. In this mood it was a relief to him that certain three

windows in the BRUDERSTRASSE remained closed and shuttered; with the

load of malicious gossip fresh on his mind, he chose rather not to see

her; he must first accustom himself to it, as to the scar left by a

wound.

He did not, of course, believe what Madeleine, with her infernal

frankness, had told him; but the knowledge that such a report was

abroad, depressed him unspeakably: it took colour from the sky and

light from the sun. Sometimes in these days, as he sat at his piano, he

had a sudden fit of discouragement, which made it seem not worth while

to continue playing. It was unthinkable that she could be aware how

busy scandal was with her name, and how her careless acts were spied on

and misrepresented; and he turned over in his mind ways and means by

which she might be induced to take more thought for herself in future.

He did not believe it; but hours of distracting uncertainty came, none

the less, when small things which his memory had stored up made him go

so far as to ask himself, what if it should be true?--what then? But he

had not courage enough to face an answer; he put the possibility away

from him, in the extreme background of his mind, refused to let his

brain piece its observations together. The mere suspicion was a

blasphemy, a blasphemy against her dignified reserve, against her sweet

pale face, her supreme disregard of those about her. Not thus would

guilt have shown itself.

Schilsky, who was the origin of all the evil, he made wide circuits to

avoid. He thought of him, at this time, with what he believed to be a

feeling of purely personal antipathy. In his most downcast moments, he

had swift and foolish visions publicly executing vengeance on him; but

if, a moment later, he saw the violinist's red hair or big hat before

him in the street, he turned aside as though the other had been

plague-struck. Once, however, when he was going up the steps of the

Conservatorium, and Schilsky, in leaping down, pushed carelessly

against him, he returned the knock so rudely and swore with such

downrightness that, in spite of his hurry, Schilsky stopped and fixed

him, and with equal vehemence damned him for a fool of an Englishman.

His despondency spread like a weed. A furious impatience overcame him,

too, at the thought of the innumerable hours he would be forced to

spend at the piano, day in, day out, for months to come, before the

result could be compared with the achievements even of many a

fellow-student. As the private lessons Schwarz gave were too expensive

for him, he decided, as a compromise, to take a course of extra lessons

with Furst, who prepared pupils for the master, and was quite willing

to come to terms, in other words, who taught for what he could get.

Once a week, then, for the rest of the summer, Maurice climbed the

steep, winding stair of the house in the BRANDVORWERKSTRASSE where

Furst lived with his mother. It was so dark on this stair that, in dull

weather, ill-trimmed lamps burnt all day long on the different

landings. To its convolutions, in its unaired corners, clung what

seemed to be the stale, accumulated smells of years; and these were

continually reinforced; since every day at dinnertime, the various

kitchen-windows, all of which gave on the stair, were opened to let the

piercing odours of cooking escape. The house, like the majority of its

kind in this relatively new street, was divided into countless small

lodgings; three families, with three rooms apiece, lived on each

storey, and on the fifth floor, at the top of the house, the same

number of rooms was let out singly. Part of the third storey was

occupied by a bird-fancier; and between him and the Fursts above waged

perpetual war, one of those petty, unending wars that can only arise

and be kept up when, as here, such heterogeneous elements are forced to

live side by side, under one roof. The fancier, although his business

was nominally in the town, had enough of his wares beside him to make

his house a lively, humming kind of place, and the strife dated back to

a day when, the door standing temptingly ajar, Peter, the Fursts' lean

cat, had sneaked stealthily in upon this, to him, enchanted ground,

and, according to the fancier, had caused the death, from fright, of a

delicate canary, although the culprit had done nothing more than sit

before the cage, licking his lips. This had happened several years ago,

but each party was still fertile in planning annoyances for the other,

and the females did not bow when they met. On the fourth floor, next

the Fursts, lived a pale, harassed teacher, with a family which had

long since outgrown its accommodation; for the wife was perpetually in

childbed, and cots and cradles were the chief furniture of the house.

As the critical moments of her career drew nigh, the "Frau Lehrer"

complained, with an aggravated bitterness, of the unceasing music that

went on behind the thin partition; and this grievance, together with

the racy items of gossip left behind the midwife's annual visit, like a

trail of smoke, provided her and Furst's mother with infinite food for

talk. They were thick friends again a few minutes after a scene so

lively that blows seemed imminent, and they met every morning on the

landing, where, with broom or child in hand, they stood gossiping by

the hour.

When Maurice rang, Frau Furst opened the door to him herself, having

first cautiously examined him through the kitchen window. Drying her

hands on her apron, she ushered him through the tiny entry--a place of

dangers, pitch-dark as it was, and lumbered with chests and

presses--into Franz's room, the "best room" of the house. Here were

collected a red plush suite, which was the pride of Frau Furst's heart,

and all the round, yellowing family photographs; here, too, stood the

well-used Bechstein, pile upon pile of music, a couple of music-stands,

a bust of Schubert, a faded, framed diploma. For years, assuredly, the

windows had never been thrown wide open; the odours of stale coffee and

forgotten dinners, of stove and warmed wood, of piano, music and

beeswax: all these lay as it were in streaks in the atmosphere, and

made it heavy and thought-benumbing.

A willing listener was worth more than gold to Frau Furst and here, the

first time he came, while waiting for Franz, Maurice heard in detail

the history of the family. The father had been an oboist in the

Gewandhaus orchestra, and had died a few years previously, of a chill

incurred after a performance of DIE MEISTERSINGER. At his death, it had

fallen on Franz to support the family; and, thanks to Schwarz's aid and

influence, Franz was able to get as many pupils as he had time to

teach. It was easy to see that this, her eldest son, was the apple of

Frau Furst's eye; her other children seemed to be there only to meet

his needs; his lightest wish was law. Each additional pupil that sought

him out, was a fresh tribute to his genius, each one that left him, no

matter after how long, was unthankful and a traitor. For the nights on

which his quartet met at the house, she prepared as another woman would

for a personal fete; and she watched the candles grow shorter without a

tinge of regret. When Franz played at an ABENDUNTERHALTUNG, the family

turned out in a body. Schwarz was a god, all-powerful, on whom their

welfare depended; and it was necessary to propitiate him by a quarterly

visit on a Sunday morning, when, over wine and biscuits, she wept real

and feigned tears of gratitude.

In this hard-working, careworn woman, who was seldom to be seen but in

petticoat, bed-jacket, and heelless, felt shoes; who, her whole life

long, had been little better than a domestic servant; in her there

existed a devotion to art which had never wavered. It would have seemed

to her contrary to nature that Franz should be anything but a musician,

and it was also quite in the order of things for them to be poor. Two

younger boys, who were still at school, gave up all their leisure time

to music--they had never in their lives tumbled round a football or

swung a bat--and Franz believed that the elder would prove a skilful

violinist. Of the little girls, one had a pure voice and a good ear,

and was to be a singer--for before this Juggernaut, prejudice went

down. Had anyone suggested to Frau Furst that her daughter should be a

clerk, even a teacher, she would have flung up hands of horror; but

music!--that was a different matter. It was, moreover, the single one

of the arts, in which this staunch advocate of womanliness granted her

sex a share.

"Ask Franz," she said to Maurice. "Franz knows. He will explain. All

women can do is to reproduce what some one else has thought or felt."

As an immortal example of the limits set by sex, she invariably fell

back on Clara Schumann, with whom she had more than once come into

personal contact. In her youth, Frau Furst had had a clear soprano

voice, and, to Maurice's interest, she told him how she had sometimes

been sent for to the Schumann's house in the INSELSTRASSE, to sing

Robert's songs for him.

"Clara accompanied me," she said, relating this, the great reminiscence

of her life; "and he was there, too, although I never saw him face to

face. He was too shy for that. But he was behind a screen, and

sometimes he would call: 'I must alter that; it is too high;' or

'Quicker, quicker!' Sometimes even 'Bravo!'"

Her motherly ambitions for Franz knew no bounds. One of the few

diversions she allowed herself was a visit to the theatre--when Franz

had tickets given to him; when one of her favourite operas was

performed; or on the anniversary of her husband's death--and, on such

occasions, she pointed out to the younger children, the links that

bound and would yet bind them to the great house.

"That was your father's seat," she reminded them every time. "The

second row from the end. He came in at the door to the left. And that,"

pointing to the conductor's raised chair, "is where Franz will sit some

day." For she dreamed of Franz in all the glory of KAPELLMEISTER; saw

him swinging the little stick that dominated the theatre-audience,

singers and players alike.

And the children, hanging over the high gallery, shuffling their

restless feet, thus had their path as dearly traced for them, their

destiny as surely sealed, as any fate-shackled heroes of antiquity.

* * * * *

Late one afternoon about this time, Franz might have been found

together with his friends Krafft and Schilsky, at the latter's lodging

in the TALSTRASSE. He was astride a chair, over the back of which he

had folded his arms; and his chubby, rubicund face glistened with

moisture.

In the middle of the room, at the corner of a bare deal table that was

piled with loose music and manuscript, Schilsky sat improving and

correcting the tails and bodies of hastily made, notes. He was still in

his nightshirt, over which he had thrown coat and trousers; and, wide

open at the neck, it exposed to the waist a skin of the dead whiteness

peculiar to red-haired people. His face, on the other hand, was sallow

and unfresh; and the reddish rims of the eyes, and the coarsely

self-indulgent mouth, contrasted strikingly with the general

youthfulness of his appearance. He had the true musician's head: round

as a cannon-ball, with a vast, bumpy forehead, on which the soft fluffy

hair began far back, and stood out like a nimbus. His eyes were either

desperately dreamy or desperately sharp, never normally attentive or at

rest; his blunted nose and chin were so short as to make the face look

top-heavy. A carefully tended young moustache stood straight out along

his cheeks. He had large, slender hands, and quick movements.

The air of the room was like a thin grey veiling, for all three puffed

hard at cigarettes. Without removing his from between his teeth,

Schilsky related an adventure of the night before. He spoke in jerks,

with a strong lisp, intent on what he was doing than on what he was

saying.

"Do you think he'd budge?" he asked in a thick, spluttery way. "Not he.

Till nearly two. And then I couldn't get him along. He thought it

wasn't eleven, and wanted to relieve himself at every corner. To

irritate an imaginary bobby. He disputed with them, too. Heavens, what

sport it was! At last I dragged him up here and got him on the sofa.

Off he rolls again. So I let him lie. He didn't disturb me."

Heinrich Krafft, the hero of the episode lay on the short,

uncomfortable sofa, with the table-cover for a blanket. In answer to

Schilsky, he said faintly, without opening his eyes: "Nothing would.

You are an ox. When I wake this morning, with a mouth like gum arabic,

he sits there as if he had not stirred all night. Then to bed, and

snores till midday, through all the hellish light and noise."

Here Furst could not resist making a little joke. He announced himself

by a chuckle-like the click of a clock about to strike.

"He's got to make the most of his liberty. He doesn't often get off

duty. We know, we know." He laughed tonelessly, and winked at Krafft.

Krafft quoted:

In der Woche zwier--

"Now, you fellows, shut up!" said Schilsky. It was plain that banter of

this kind was not disagreeable to him; at the same time he was just at

the moment too engrossed, to have more than half an car for what was

said. With his short-sighted eyes close to the paper, he was listening

with all his might to some harmonies that his fingers played on the

table. When, a few minutes later he rose and stretched the stiffness

from his limbs, his face, having lost its expression of rapt

concentration, seemed suddenly to have grown younger. He set about

dressing himself by drawing off his nightshirt over his head. At a word

from him, Furst sprang to collect utensils for making coffee. Heinrich

Krafft opened his eyes and followed their movements; and the look he

had for Schilsky was as warily watchful as a cat's.

Schilsky, an undeveloped Hercules--he was narrow in proportion to his

height--and still naked to the waist, took some bottles from a long

line of washes and perfumes that stood on the washstand, and, crossing

to an elegant Venetian-glass mirror, hung beside the window, lathered

his chin. It was a peculiarity of his only to be able to attend

thoroughly to one thing at a time, and a string of witticisms uttered

by Furst passed unheeded. But Krafft's first words made him start.

Having watched him for some time, the latter said slowly. "I say, old

fellow, are you sure it's all square about Lulu and this Dresden

business?"

Razor in hand, Schilsky turned and looked at him. As he did so, he

coloured, and answered with an over-anxious haste: "Of course I am. I

made her go. She didn't want to."

"That's a well-known trick."

The young man scowled and thrust out his under-lip. "Do you think I'm

not up to their tricks? Do you want to teach me how to manage a woman?

I tell you I sent her away."

He tried to continue shaving, but was visibly uneasy. "Well, if you

won't believe me," he said, with sudden anger, though neither of the

others had spoken. "Now where the deuce is that letter?"

He rummaged among the music and papers on the table; in chaotic

drawers; beneath dirty, fat-scaled dinner-dishes on the washstand;

between door and stove, through a kind of rubbishheap that had formed

with time, of articles of dress, spoiled sheets of music-paper, soiled

linen, empty bottles, and boots, countless boots, single and in pairs.

When he had found what he looked for, he ran his eyes down the page, as

if he were going to read it aloud. Then, however, he changed his mind;

a boyish gratification overspread his face, and, tossing the letter to

Krafft, he bade them read it for themselves. Furst leaned over the end

of the sofa. It was written in English, in a bold, scrawly hand, and

ran, without date or heading:

MY OWN DEAREST

NOW ONLY FOUR DAYS MORE--I COUNT THEM MORNING AND NIGHT. I AM GOOD FOR

NOTHING--MY THOUGHTS ARE ALWAYS WITH YOU. YESTERDAY AT THE GALLERY I

SAT ALONE IN THE ROOM WHERE THE MADONNA IS, PRETENDING

ENTHUSIASM--WHILE THE REST WENT TO HOLBEIN--AND READ YOUR LETTER OVER

AND OVER AGAIN. BUT IT MADE ME A LITTLE UNHAPPY TOO, FOR I SOON FOUND

OUT THAT YOU HAD WRITTEN IT AT THREE DIFFERENT TIMES. IS IT REALLY SO

HARD TO WRITE TO LULU?

HAVE YOU WORKED BETTER FOR WANT OF INTERRUPTION?--MY DAMNED

INTERRUPTIONS, AS YOU CALLED THEM LAST WEEK WHEN YOU WERE SO ANGRY WITH

ME. SHALL YOU HAVE A GREAT DEAL TO SHOW ME WHEN I COME HOME? NO--DON'T

SAY YOU WILL--OR I SHALL HATE ZARATHUSTRA MORE THAN I DO ALREADY.

AND NOW ONLY TILL FRIDAY. THIS TIME YOU WILL MEET ME YES?--AND NOT COME

TO THE STATION AN HOUR LATE, AS YOU SAID YOU DID LAST TIME. IF YOU ARE

NOT THERE--I WARN YOU--I SHALL THROW MYSELF UNDER THE TRAIN. I AM

WRITING, TO GRUNHUT. GET FLOWERS--THERE IS MONEY IN ONE OF THE VASES ON

THE WRITING-TABLE. OH, IF YOU ONLY WILL, WE SHALL HAVE SUCH A HAPPY

EVENING--IF ONLY YOU WILL. AND I SHALL NEVER LEAVE YOU AGAIN, NEVER

AGAIN.

YOUR OWN LOVING, L.

Furst could not make out much of this; he was still spelling through

the first paragraph when Krafft had finished. Schilsky, who had gone on

dressing, kept a sharp eye on his friends--particularly on Krafft.

"Well?" he asked eagerly as the letter was laid down.

Krafft was silent, but Furst kissed his finger-tips to a large hanging

photograph of the girl in question, and was facetious on the subject of

dark, sallow women.

"And you, Heinz? What do you say?" demanded Schilsky with growing

impatience.

Still Krafft did not reply, and Schilsky was mastered by a violent

irritation.

"Why the devil can't you open your mouth? What's the matter with you?

Have YOU anything like that to show--you Joseph, you?"

Krafft let a waxen hand drop over the side of the sofa and trail on the

floor. "The letters were burned, dear boy--when you appeared." He

closed his eyes and smiled, seeming to remember something. But a moment

later, he fixed Schilsky sharply, and asked: "You want my opinion, do

you?"

"Of course I do," said Schilsky, and flung things about the room.

"Lulu," said Krafft with deliberation, "Lulu is getting you under her

thumb."

The other sprang up, swore, and aimed a boot, which he had been vainly

trying to put on the wrong foot, at a bottle that protruded from the

rubbish-heap.

"Me? Me under her thumb?" he spluttered--his lips became more marked

under excitement. "I should like to see her try it. You don't know me.

You don't know Lulu. I am her master, I tell you. She can't call her

soul her own."

"And yet," said Krafft, unmoved, "it's a fact all the same."

Schilsky applied a pair of curling tongs to his hair, at such a degree

of heat that a lock frizzled, and came off in his hand. His anger

redoubled. "Is it my fault that she acts like a wet-nurse? Is that what

you call being under her thumb?" he cried.

Furst tried to conciliate him and to make peace. "You're a lucky dog,

old fellow, and you know you are. We all know it--in spite of

occasional tantaras. But you would be still luckier if you took a

friend's sound advice and got you to the registrar. Ten minutes before

the registrar, and everything would be different. Then she might play

up as she liked; you would be master in earnest."

"Registrar?" echoed Krafft with deep scorn. "Listen to the ape! Not if

we can hinder it. When he's fool enough for that--I know him--it will

be with something fresher and less faded, something with the bloom

still on it."

Schilsky winced as though he had been struck. Her age--she was eight

years older than he--was one of his sorest points.

"Oh, come on, now," said Furst as he poured out the coffee. "That's

hardly fair. She's not so young as she might be, it's true, but no one

can hold a candle to her still. Lulu is Lulu."

"Ten minutes before the registrar," continued Krafft, meditatively

shaking his head. "And for the rest of life, chains. And convention.

And security, which stales. And custom, which satiates. Oh no, I am not

for matrimony!"

Schilsky's ill-humour evaporated in a peal of boisterous laughter.

"Yes, and tell us why, chaste Joseph, tell us why," he cried, throwing

a brush at his friend. "Or go to the devil--where you're at home."

Krafft warded off the brush. "Look here," he said, "confess. Have you

kissed another girl for months? Have you had a single billet-doux?"

But Schilsky only winked provokingly. Having finished laughing, he said

with emphasis: "But after Lulu, they are all tame. Lulu is Lulu, and

that's the beginning and end of the matter."

"Exactly my opinion," said Furst. "And yet, boys, if I wanted to make

your mouths water, I could." He closed one eye and smacked his lips. "I

know of something--something young and blond ... and dimpled ... and

round, round as a feather-pillow"--he made descriptive movements of the

hand--"with a neck, boys, a neck, I say----" Here in sheer ecstasy, he

stuck fast, and could get no further.

Schilsky roared anew. "He knows of something ... so he does," he

cried--Furst's pronounced tastes were a standing joke among them. "Show

her to us, old man, show her to us! Where are you hiding her? If she's

under eighteen, she'll do--under eighteen, mind you, not a day over.

Come along, I'm on for a spree. Up with you, Joseph!"

He was ready, come forth from the utter confusion around him, like a

god from a cloud. He wore light grey clothes, a loosely knotted, bright

blue tie, with floating ends and conspicuous white spots, and buttoned

boots of brown kid. Hair and handkerchief were strongly scented.

Krafft, having been prevailed on to rise, made no further toilet than

that of dipping his head in a basin of water, which stood on the tail

of the grand piano. His hair emerged a mass of dripping ringlets,

covetously eyed by his companions.

They walked along the streets, Schilsky between the others, whom he

overtopped by head and shoulders: three young rebels out against the

Philistines: three bursting charges of animal spirits.

There was to be a concert that evening at the Conservatorium, and,

through vestibule and entrance-halls, which, for this reason, were

unusually crowded, the young men made a kind of triumphal progress.

Especially Schilsky. Not a girl, young or old, but peddled for a word

or a look from him; and he was only too prodigal of insolently

expressive glances, whispered greetings, and warm pressures of the

hand. The open flattery and bold adoration of which he was the object

mounted to his head; he felt secure in his freedom, and brimful of

selfconfidence; and, as the three of them walked back to the town, his

exhilaration, a sheer excess of well-being, was no longer to be kept

within decent bounds.

"Wait!" he cried suddenly as they were passing the Gewandhaus. "Wait a

minute! See me make that woman there take a fit."

He ran across the road to the opposite pavement, where the only person

in sight, a stout, middle-aged woman, was dragging slowly along, her

arms full of parcels; and, planting himself directly in front of her,

so that she was forced to stop, he seized both her hands and worked

them up and down.

"Now upon my soul, who would have thought of seeing you here, you

baggage, you?" he cried vociferously.

The woman was speechless from amazement; her packages fell to the

ground, and she gazed open-mouthed at the wild-haired lad before her,

making, at the same time, vain attempts to free her hands.

"No, this really is luck," he went on, holding her fast. "Come, a kiss,

my duck, just one! EIN KUSSCHEN IN EHREN, you know----" and, in very

fact, he leaned forward and pecked at her cheek.

The blood dyed her face and she panted with rage.

"You young scoundrel!" she gasped. "You impertinent young dog! I'll

give you in charge. I'll--I'll report you to the police. Let me go this

instant--this very instant, do you hear?--or I'll scream for help."

The other two had come over to enjoy the fun. Schilsky turned to them

with a comical air of dismay, and waved his arm. "Well I declare, if I

haven't been and made a mistake!" he exclaimed, and slapped his

forehead. "I'm out by I don't know how much--by twenty years, at least.

No thank you, Madam, keep your kisses! You're much too old and ugly for

me."

He flourished his big hat in her face, pirouetted on his heel, and the

three of them went down the street, hallooing with laughter.

They had supper together at the BAVARIA, Schilsky standing treat; for

they had gone by way of the BRUDERSTRASSE, where he called in to

investigate the vase mentioned in the letter. Afterwards, they

commenced an informal wandering from one haunt to another, now by

themselves, now with stray acquaintances. Krafft, who was still

enfeebled by the previous night, and who, under the best of

circumstances, could not carry as much as his friends, was the first to

give in. For a time, they got him about between them. Then Furst grew

obstreperous, and wanted to pour his beer on the floor as soon as it

was set before him, so that they were put out of two places, in the

second of which they left Krafft. But the better half of the night was

over before Schilsky was comfortably drunk, and in a state to unbosom

himself to a sympathetic waitress, about the hardship it was to be

bound to some one older than yourself. He shed tears of pity at his

lot, and was extremely communicative. "'N KORPER, SCHA-AGE IHNEN, 'N

KORPER!" but old, old, a "HALB'SCH JAHR' UND'RT" older than he was, and

desperately jealous.

"It's too bad; such a nice young man as you are," said the MAMSELL,

who, herself not very sober, was sitting at ease on his knee, swinging

her legs. "But you nice ones are always chicken-hearted. Treat her as

she deserves, my chuck, and make no bones about it. Just let her

rip--and you stick to me!"

VI.

One cold, windy afternoon, when dust was stirring and rain seemed

imminent, Maurice Guest walked with bent head and his hat pulled over

his eyes. He was returning from the ZEITZERSTRASSE, where, in a

photographer's show-case, he had a few days earlier discovered a large

photograph of Louise. This was a source of great pleasure to him. Here,

no laws of breeding or delicacy hindered him from gazing at her as

often as he chose.

On this particular day, whether he had looked too long, or whether the

unrest of the weather, the sense of something impending, the dusty

dryness that craved rain, had got into his blood and disquieted him:

whatever it was, he felt restless and sick for news of her, and, at

this very moment, was on his way to Madeleine, in the foolish hope of

hearing her name.

But a little adventure befell him which made him forget his intention.

He was about to turn the corner of a street, when a sudden blast of

wind swept round, bearing with it some half dozen single sheets of

music. For a moment they whirled high, then sank fluttering to the

ground, only to rise again and race one another along the road. Maurice

instinctively gave chase, but it was not easy to catch them; no sooner

had he secured one than the next was out of his reach.

Meanwhile their owner, a young and very pretty girl, looked on and

laughed, without making any effort to help him; and the more he exerted

himself, the more she laughed. In one hand she was carrying a

violin-case, in the other a velvet muff, which now and again she raised

to her lips, as if to conceal her mirth. It was a graceful movement,

but an unnecessary one, for her laughter was of that charming kind,

which never gives offence; and, besides that, although it was

continuous, it was neither hearty enough nor frank enough to be

unbecoming the face was well under control. She stood there, with her

head slightly on one side, and the parted lips showed both rows of

small, even teeth; but the smile was unvarying, and, in spite of her

merriment, her eyes did not for an instant quit the young man's face,

as he darted to and fro.

Maurice could not help laughing himself, red and out of breath though

he was.

"Now for the last one," he said in German.

At these words she seemed more amused than ever. "I don't speak

German," she answered in English, with a strong American accent.

Having captured all the sheets, Maurice tried to arrange them for her.

"It's my Kayser," she explained with a quick, upward glance, adding the

next minute with a fresh ripple of laughter. "He's all to pieces."

"You have too much to carry," said Maurice. "On such a windy day, too."

"That's what Joan said--Joan is my sister," she continued. "But I guess

it's so cold this afternoon I had to bring a muff along. If my fingers

are stiff I can't play, and then Herr Becker is angry." But she laughed

again as she spoke, and it was plain that the master's wrath did not

exactly incite fear. "Joan always comes along, but to-day she's sick."

"Will you let me help you?" asked Maurice, and a moment later he was

walking at her side.

She handed over music and violin to him without a trace of hesitation;

and, as they went along the PROMENADE, she talked to him with as little

embarrassment as though they were old acquaintances. It was so kind of

him to help her, she thought; she couldn't imagine how she would ever

have got home without him, alone against the wind; and she was

perfectly sure he must be American--no one but an American would be so

nice. When Maurice denied this, she laughed very much indeed, and was

not sure, this being the case, whether she could like him or not; as a

rule, she didn't like English people; they were stiff and horrid, and

were always wanting either to be introduced or to shake hands. Here she

carried her muff up to her lips again, and her eyes shone mischievously

at him over the dark velvet. Maurice had never known anyone so easily

moved to laughter; whenever she spoke she laughed, and she laughed at

everything he said.

Off the PROMENADE, where the trees were of a marvellous Pale green,

they turned into a street of high spacious houses, the dark lines of

which were here and there broken by an arched gateway, or the delicate

tints of a spring garden. To a window in one of the largest houses

Maurice's little friend looked up, and smiled and nodded.

"There's my sister."

The young man looked, too, and saw a dark, thin-faced girl, who, when

she found four eyes fixed on her, abruptly drew in her head, and as

abruptly put it out again, leaning her two hands on the sill.

"She's wondering who it is," said Maurice's companion gleefully. Then,

turning her face up, she made a speaking-trumpet of her hands, and

cried: "It's all right, Joan.--Now I must run right up and tell her

about it," she said to Maurice. "Perhaps she'll scold; Joan is very

particular. Good-bye. Thank you ever so much for being so good to

me--oh, won't you tell me your name?"

The very next morning brought him a small pink note, faintly scented.

The pointed handwriting was still childish, but there was a coquettish

flourish beneath the pretty signature: Ephie Cayhill. Besides a

graceful word of thanks, she wrote: WE ARE AT HOME EVERY SUNDAY. MAMMA

WOULD BE VERY PLEASED.

Maurice did not scruple to call the following week, and on doing so,

found himself in the midst of one of those English-speaking coteries,

which spring up in all large, continental towns. Foreigners were not

excluded--Maurice discovered two or three of his German friends,

awkwardly balancing their cups on their knees. In order, however, to

gain access to the circle, it was necessary for them to have a

smattering of English; they had also to be flint against any open or

covert fun that might be made of them or their country; and above all,

to be skilled in the art of looking amiable, while these visitors from

other lands heatedly readjusted, to their own satisfaction, all that

did not please them in the life and laws of this country that was

temporarily their home.

Mrs. Cayhill was a handsome woman, who led a comfortable, vegetable

existence, and found it a task to rise from the plump sofa-cushion. Her

pleasant features were slack, and in those moments of life which called

for a sudden decision, they wore the helpless bewilderment of a woman

who has never been required to think for herself. Her grasp on

practical matters was rendered the more lax, too, by her being an

immoderate reader, who fed on novels from morning till night, and slept

with a page turned down beside her bed. She was for ever lost in the

joys or sorrows of some fictitious person, and, in consequence,

remained for the most part completely ignorant of what was going on

around her. When she did happen to become conscious of her

surroundings, she was callous, or merely indifferent, to them; for,

compared with romance, life was dull and diffuse; it lacked the wilful

simplicity, the exaggerative omissions, and forcible perspectives,

which make up art: in other words, life demanded that unceasing work of

selection and rejection, which it is the story-teller's duty to Perform

for his readers. All novels were fish to Mrs. Cayhill's net; she lived

in a world of intrigue and excitement, and, seated in her easy-chair by

the sitting-room window, was generally as remote from her family as

though she were in Timbuctoo.

There was a difference of ten years in age between her daughters, and

it was the younger of the two whose education was being completed.

Johanna, the elder, had been a disappointment to her mother. Left to

her own devices at an impressionable age, the girl had developed

bookish tastes at the cost of her appearance: influenced by a

free-thinking tutor of her brothers', she had read Huxley and Haeckel,

Goethe and Schopenhauer. Her wish had been for a university career, but

she was not of a self-assertive nature, and when Mrs. Cayhill, who felt

her world toppling about her ears at the mention of such a thing, said:

"Not while I live!" she yielded, without a further word; and the fact

that such an emphatic expression of opinion had been drawn from the

mild-tempered mother, made it a matter of course that no other member

of the family took Johanna's part. So she buried her ambitions, and

kept her mother's house in an admirable, methodical way.

It was not the sacrifice it seemed, however, because Johanna adored her

little sister, and would cheerfully have given up more than this for

her sake. Ephie, who was at that time just emerging from childhood, was

very pretty and precocious, and her mother had great hopes of her. She

also tired early of her lesson-books, and, soon after she turned

sixteen, declared her intention of leaving school. As at least a couple

of years had still to elapse before she was old enough to be introduced

in society, Mrs. Cayhill, taking the one decisive step of her life,

determined that travel in Europe should put the final touches to

Ephie's education: a little German and French; some finishing lessons

on the violin; a run through Italy and Switzerland, and then to Paris,

whence they would carry back with them a complete and costly outfit.

So, valiantly, Mrs. Cayhill had her trunks packed, and, together with

Johanna, who would as soon have thought of denying her age as of

letting these two helpless beings go out into the world alone, they

crossed the Atlantic.

For some three months now, they had been established in Leipzig. A

circulating library, rich in English novels, had been discovered; Mrs.

Cayhill was content; and it began to be plain to Johanna that the

greater part of their two years' absence would be spent in this place.

Ephie, too, had already had time to learn that, as far as music was

concerned, her business was not so much with finishing as with

beginning, and that the road to art, which she with all the rest must

follow, was a steep one. She might have found it still more arduous,

had Herr Becker, her master, not been a young man and very

impressionable. And Ephie never looked more charming than when, with

her rounded, dimpled arm raised in an exquisite curve, she leaned her

cheek against the glossy brown wood of her violin.

She was pretty with that untouched, infantine prettiness, before which

old and young go helplessly down. She was small and plump, with a full,

white throat and neck, and soft, rounded hands and wrists, that were

dimpled like a baby's. Her brown hair was drawn back from the low

forehead, but, both here and at the back of her neck, it broke into

innumerable little curls, which were much lighter in colour than the

rest. Her skin, faintly tinged, was as smooth as the skin of a cherry;

it had that exquisite freshness which is only to be found in a very

young girl, and is lovelier than the bloom on ripe fruit. Her dark blue

eyes were well opened, but the black lashes were so long and so

peculiarly straight that the eyes themselves were usually hidden, and

this made it all the more effective did she suddenly look up. Moulded

like wax, the small, upturned nose seemed to draw the top lip after it;

anyhow, the upper lip was too short to meet the lower, and

consequently, they were always slightly apart, in a kind of questioning

amaze. This mouth was the real beauty of the face: bright red, full,

yet delicate, arched like a bow, with corners that went in and upwards,

it belonged, by right of its absolute innocence, to the face of a

little child; and the thought was monstrous that nature and the years

would eventually combine to destroy so perfect a thing.

She also had a charming laugh, with a liquid note in it, that made one

think of water bubbling on a dry summer day.

It was this laugh that held the room on Sunday afternoon, and drew the

handful of young men together, time after time.

Mrs. Cayhill, who, on these occasions, was wont to lay aside her book,

was virtually a deeper echo of her little daughter, and Johanna only

counted in so far as she made and distributed cups of tea at the end of

the room. She did not look with favour on the young men who gathered

there, and her manner to them was curt and unpleasing. Each of them in

turn, as he went up to her for his cup, cudgelled his brain for

something to say; but it was no easy matter to converse with Johanna.

The ordinary small change and polite commonplace of conversation, she

met with a silent contempt. In musical chit-chat, she took no interest

whatever, and pretended to none, openly indeed "detested music," and

was unable to distinguish Mendelssohn from Wagner, "except by the

noise;" while if a bolder man than the rest rashly ventured on the

literary ground that was her special demesne, she either smiled at what

he said, in a disagreeably sarcastic way, or flatly contradicted him.

She was the thorn in the flesh of these young men; and after having

dutifully spent a few awkward moments at her side, they stole back, one

by one, to the opposite end of the room. Here Ephie, bewitchingly

dressed in blue, swung to and fro in a big American

rocking-chair--going backwards, it carried her feet right off the

ground--and talked charming nonsense, to the accompaniment of her own

light laugh, and her mother's deeper notes, which went on like an

organ-point, Mrs. Cayhill finding everything Ephic said, matchlessly

amusing.

As Dove and Maurice walked there together for the first time--it now

leaked out that Dove spent every Sunday afternoon in the

LESSINGSTRASSE--he spoke to Maurice of Johanna. Not in a disparaging

way; Dove had never been heard to mention a woman's name otherwise than

with respect. And, in this case, he deliberately showed up Johanna's

good qualities, in the hope that Maurice might feel attracted by her,

and remain at her side; for Dove had fallen deeply in love with Ephie,

and had, as it was, more rivals than he cared for, in the field.

"You should get on with her, I think, Guest," he said slily. "You read

these German writers she is so interested in. But don't be discouraged

by her manner. For though she's one of the most unselfish women I ever

met, her way of Speaking is sometimes abrupt. She reminds me, if it

doesn't sound unkind, of a faithful watch-dog, or something of the

sort, which cannot express its devotion as it would like to."

When, after a lively greeting from Ephie, and a few pleasant words from

Mrs. Cayhill, Maurice found himself standing beside Johanna, the truth

of Dove's simile was obvious to him. This dark, unattractive girl had

apparently no thought for anything but her tea-making; she moved the

cups this way and that, filled the pot with water, blew out and lighted

again the flame of the spirit-lamp, without paying the least heed to

Maurice, making, indeed, such an ostentatious show of being occupied,

that it would have needed a brave man to break in upon her duties with

idle words. He remained standing, however, in a constrained silence,

which lasted until she could not invent anything else to do, and was

obliged to drink her own tea. Then he said abruptly, in a tone which he

meant to be easy, but which was only jaunty: "And how do you like being

in Germany, Miss Cayhill? Does it not seem very strange after America?"

Johanna lifted her shortsighted eyes to his face, and looked coolly and

disconcertingly at him through her glasses, as if she had just become

aware of his presence.

"Strange? Why should it?" she asked in an unfriendly tone.

"Why, what I mean is, everything must be so different here from what

you are accustomed to--at least it is from what we are used to in

England," he corrected himself. "The ways and manners, and the

language, and all that sort of thing, you know."

"Excuse me, I do not know," she answered in the same tone as before.

"If a person takes the trouble to prepare himself for residence in a

foreign country, nothing need seem either strange or surprising. But

English people, as is well known, expect to find a replica of England

in every country they go to."

There was a pause, in which James, the pianist, who was a regular

visitor, approached to have his cup refilled. All the circle knew, of

course, that Johanna was "doing for a new man"; and it seemed to

Maurice that James half closed one eye at him, and gave him a small,

sympathetic nudge with his elbow.

So he held to his guns. When James had retired, he began anew, without

preamble.

"My friend Dove tells me you are interested in German literature?" he

said with a slight upward inflection in his voice.

Johanna did not reply, but she shot a quick glance at him, and

colouring perceptibly, began to fidget with the tea-things.

"I've done a little in that line myself," continued Maurice, as she

made no move to answer him. "In a modest way, of course. Just lately I

finished reading the JUNGFRAU VON ORLEANS."

"Is that so?" said Johanna with an emphasis which made him colour also.

"It is very fine, is it not?" he asked less surely, and as she again

acted as though he had not spoken, he lost his presence of mind. "I

suppose you know it? You're sure to."

This time Johanna turned scarlet, as if he had touched her on a sore

spot, and answered at once, sharply and rudely. "And I suppose," she

said, and her hands shook a little as they fussed about the tray, "that

you have also read MARIA STUART, and TELL, and a page or two of Jean

Paul. You have perhaps heard of Lessing and Goethe, and you consider

Heine the one and only German poet."

Maurice did not understand what she meant, but she had spoken so loudly

and forbiddingly that several eyes were turned on them, making it

incumbent on him not to take offence. He emptied his cup, and put it

down, and tried to give the matter an airy turn.

"And why not?" he asked pleasantly. "Is there anything wrong in

thinking so? Schiller and Goethe WERE great poets, weren't they? And

you will grant that Heine is the only German writer who has had

anything approaching a style?"

Johanna's face grew stony. "I have no intention of granting anything,"

she said. "Like all English people--it flatters your national vanity, I

presume--you think German literature began and ended with Heine.--A

miserable Jew!"

"Yes, but I say, one can hardly make him responsible for being a Jew,

can you? What has that got to do with it?" exclaimed Maurice, this

being a point of view that had never presented itself to him. And as

Johanna only murmured something that was inaudible, he added lamely:

"Then you don't think much of Heine?"

But she declined to be drawn into a discussion, even into an expression

of opinion, and the young man continued, with apology in his tone: "It

may be bad taste on my part, of course. But one hears it said on every

side. If you could tell me what I ought to read ... or, perhaps, advise

me a little?" he ended tentatively.

"I don't lend my books," said Johanna more rudely than she had yet

spoken. And that was all Maurice could get from her. A minute or two

later, she rose and went out of the room.

It became much less restrained as soon as the door had closed behind

her. Ephie laughed more roguishly, and Mrs. Cayhill allowed herself to

find what her little daughter said, droller than before. With an

appearance of unconcern, Maurice strolled back to the group by the

window. Dove was also talking of literature.

"That reminds me, how did you like the book I lent you on Wednesday,

Mrs. Cayhill?" he asked, at the same instant springing forward to pick

up Ephie's handkerchief, which had fallen to the ground.

"Oh, very much indeed, very interesting, very good of you," answered

Mrs. Cayhill. "Ephie, darling, the sun is shining right on your face."

"What was it?" asked James, while Dove jumped up anew to lower the

blind, and Ephie raised a bare, dimpled arm to shade her eyes.

Mrs. Cayhill could not recollect the title just at once she had a

"wretched memory for names"--and went over what she had been reading.

"Let me see, it was ... no, that was yesterday: SHADOWED BY THREE, a

most delightful Book. On Friday, RICHARD ELSMERE, and--oh, yes, I know,

it was about a farm, an Australian farm."

"THE STORY OF AN AFRICAN FARM," put in Dove mildly, returning to his

seat.

"Australian or African, it doesn't matter which," said Mrs. Cayhill.

"Yes, a nice book, but a little coarse in parts, and very foolish at

the end--the disguising, and the dying out of doors, and the

looking-glass, and all that."

"I must say I think it a very powerful book," said Dove solemnly. "That

part, you know, where the boy listens to the clock ticking in the

night, and thinks to himself that with every tick, a soul goes home to

God. A very striking idea!"

"Why, I think it must be a horrid book," cried Ephie. "All about dying.

Fancy some one dying every minute. It couldn't possibly be true. For

then the world would soon be empty."

"Always there are coming more into it," said Furst, in his blunt,

broken English.

A pause ensued. Dove flicked dust off his trouser-leg; and the American

men present were suddenly fascinated by the bottoms of their cups.

Ephie was the first to regain her composure.

"Now let us talk of something pleasant, something quite different--from

dying." She turned and, over her shoulder, laughed mischievously at

Maurice, who was siting behind her. Then, leaning forward in her chair,

with every eye upon her, she told how Maurice had saved her music from

the wind, and, with an arch face, made him appear very ridiculous. By

her prettily exaggerated description of a heated, perspiring young man,

darting to and fro, and muttering to himself in German, her hearers,

Maurice included, were highly diverted--and no one more than Mrs.

Cayhill.

"You puss, you puss!" she cried, wiping her eyes and shaking a finger

at the naughty girl.

The general amusement had hardly subsided when Furst rose to his feet,

and, drawing his heels together, made a flowery little speech, the gist

of which was, that he would have esteemed himself a most fortunate man,

had he been in Maurice's place. Ephie and her mother exchanged looks,

and shook with ill-concealed mirth, so that Furst, who had spoken

seriously and in good faith, sat down red and uncomfortable; and

Boehmer, who was dressed in what he believed to be American fashion,

smiled in a superior manner, to show he was aware that Furst was making

himself ridiculous.

"Look here, Miss Ephie," said James; "the next time you have to go out

alone, just send for me, and I'll take care of you."

"Or me" said Dove. "You have only to let me know."

"No, no, Mr. Dove!" cried Mrs. Cayhill. "You do far too much for her as

it is. You'll spoil her altogether."

But at this, several of the young men exclaimed loudly: that would be

impossible. And Ephie coloured becomingly, raised her lashes, and

distributed winning smiles. Then quiet had been restored, she assured

them that they all very kind, but she would never let anyone go with

her but Joan--dear old Joan. They could not imagine how fond she was of

Joan.

"She is worth more than all of you put together." And at the cries of:

"Oh, oh!" she was thrown into a new fit of merriment, and went still

further. "I would not give Joan's little finger for anyone in the

world."

And meanwhile, as all her hearers--all, that is to say, except Dove,

who sat moody, fingering his slight moustache, and gazing at Ephie with

fondly reproachful eyes--as all of them, with Mrs. Cayhill at their

head, made vehement protest against this sweeping assertion, Johanna

sat alone in her bedroom, at the back of the house. It was a dull room,

looking on a courtyard, but she was always glad to escape to it from

the flippant chatter in the sitting-room. Drawing a little table to the

window, she sat down and began to read. But, on this day, her thoughts

wandered; and, ultimately, propping her chin on her hand, she fell into

reverie, which began with something like "the fool and his Schiller!"

and ended with her rising, and going to the well-stocked book-shelves

that stood at the foot of the bed.

She took out a couple of volumes and looked through them, then returned

them to their places on the shelf. No, she said to herself, why should

she? What she had told the young man was true: she never lent her

books; he would soil them, or, worse still, not appreciate them as he

ought--she could not give anyone who visited there on Sunday, credit

for a nice taste.

Unknown to herself, however, something worked in her, for, the very

next time Maurice was there, she met him in the passage, as he was

leaving, and impulsively thrust a paper parcel into his hand.

"There is a book, if you care to take it."

He did not express the surprise he felt, nor did he look at the title.

But Ephie, who was accompanying him to the door, made a face of

laughing stupefaction behind her sister's back, and went out on the

landing with him, to whisper: "What HAVE you been doing to Joan?"--at

which remark, and at Maurice's blank face, she laughed so immoderately

that she was forced to go down the stairs with him, for fear Joan

should hear her; and, in the house-door, she stood, a white-clad little

figure, and waved her hand to him until he turned the corner.

Having read the first volume of HAMMER UND AMBOSS deep into two nights,

Maurice returned it and carried away the second. But it was only after

he had finished PROBLEMATISCHE NATUREN, and had expressed himself with

due enthusiasm, that Johanna began to thaw a little. She did not

discuss what he read with him; but, going on the assumption that a

person who could relish her favourite author had some good in him, she

gave the young man the following proof of her favour.

Between Ephie and him there had sprung up spontaneously a mutual

liking, which it is hard to tell the cause of. For Ephie knew nothing

of Maurice's tastes, interests and ambitions, and he did not dream of

asking her to share them. Yet, with the safe instincts of a young girl,

she chose him for a brother from among all her other acquaintances;

called him "Morry"; scarcely ever coquetted with him; and let him

freely into her secrets. It is easier to see why Maurice was attracted

to her; for not only was Ephie pretty and charming; she was also

adorably equable--she did not know what it was to be out of humour. And

she was always glad to see him, always in the best possible spirits.

When he was dull or tired, it acted like a tonic on him, to sit and let

her merry chatter run over him. And soon, he found plenty of makeshifts

to see her; amongst other things, he arranged to help her twice a week

with harmony, which was, to her, an unexplorable abyss; and he

ransacked the rooms and shelves of his acquaintances to find old

Tauchnitz volumes to lend to Mrs. Cayhill.

The latter paid even less attention to the sudden friendship of her

daughter with this young man than the ordinary American mother would

have done; but Johanna's toleration of it was, for the most part, to be

explained by the literary interests before mentioned. For Johanna was

always in a tremble lest Ephie should become spoiled; and thoughtless

Ephie could, at times, cause her a most subtle torture, by being

prettily insincere, by assuming false coquettish airs, or by seeming to

have private thoughts which she did not confide to her sister. This,

and the knowledge that Ephie was now of an age when every day might be

expected to widen the distance between them, sometimes made Johanna

very gruff and short, even with Ephie herself. As her sister, she alone

knew how much was good and true under the child's light exterior; she

admired in Ephie all that she herself had not--her fair prettiness, her

blithe manner, her easy, graceful words--and, had it been necessary,

she would have gone down on her knees to remove the stones from Ephie's

path.

Thus although on the casual observer, Johanna only made the impression

of a dark, morose figure, which hovered round two childlike beings,

intercepting the sunshine of their lives, yet Maurice had soon come

often enough into contact with her to appreciate her unselfishness;

and, for the care she took of Ephie, he could almost have liked her,

had Johanna shown the least readiness to be liked. Naturally, he did

not understand how highly he was favoured by her; he knew neither the

depth of her affection for Ephie, nor the exact degree of contempt in

which she held the young men who dangled there on a Sunday--poor fools

who were growing fat on emotion and silly ideas, when they should have

been taking plain, hard fare at college. To Dove, Johanna had a

particular aversion; chiefly, and in a contradictory spirit, because it

was evident to all that his intentions were serious. But she could not

hinder wayward Ephie from making a shameless use of him, and then

laughing at him behind his back--a laugh in which Mrs. Cayhill was not

always able to refrain from joining, though it must be said that she

was usually loud in her praises of Dove, at the expense of all visitors

who were not American.

"From these Dutch you can't expect much, one way or the other," she

declared. "And young Guest sometimes sits there with a face as long as

my arm. But Dove is really a most sensible young fellow--why, he thinks

just as I do about Arnerica."

And as a special mark of favour, when Dove left the house on Sunday

afternoon, his pockets bulged with NEW YORK HERALDS.

VII.

Meanwhile, before the blinds in the BRUDERSTRASSE were drawn up again,

Maurice had found his way back to Madeleine. When they met, she smiled

at him in a somewhat sarcastic manner, but no reference was made to the

little falling-out they had had, and they began afresh to read and play

together. On the first afternoon, Maurice was full of his new friends,

and described them at length to her. But Madeleine damped his ardour.

"I know them, yes, of course," she said. "The usual Americans--even the

blue-stocking, from whom heaven defend us. The little one is pretty

enough as long as she keeps her mouth shut. But the moment she speaks,

every illusion is shattered.--Why I don't go there on a Sunday? Good

gracious, do you think they want me?--me, or any other petticoat? Are

honours made to be divided?--No, Maurice, I don't like Americans. I was

once offered a position in America, as 'professor of piano and

voice-production' in a place called Schenectady; but I didn't hesitate.

I said to myself, better one hundred a year in good old England, than

five in a country where the population is so inflated with its

importance that I should always be in danger of running amuck. And

besides that, I should lose my accent, and forget how to say 'leg';

while the workings of the stomach would be discussed before me with an

unpleasant freedom."

"You're too hard on them, Madeleine," said Maurice, smiling in spite of

himself. But he was beginning to stand in awe of her sharp tongue and

decided opinions; and, in the week that followed, he took himself

resolutely together, and did not let a certain name cross his lips.

Consequently, he was more than surprised on returning to his room one

day, to find a note from Madeleine, saying that she expected Louise

that very afternoon at three.

It was not news to Maurice that Louise had come home. The evening

before, as he turned out of the BRUDERSTRASSE, a closed droschke turned

into it. After the vehicle had lumbered past him and disappeared, the

thought crossed his mind that she might be inside it. He had not then

had time to go back but early this very morning, he had passed the

house and found the windows open. So Madeleine had engaged her

immediately! As usual, Furst had kept him waiting for his lesson; it

was nearly three o'clock already, and he was so hurried that he could

only change his collar; but, on the way there, in a sudden spurt of

gratitude, he ran to a flower-shop, and bought a large bunch of

carnations.

He arrived at Madeleine's room in an elation he did not try to hide;

and over the carnations they had a mock reconciliation. Madeleine

wished to distribute the flowers in different vases about the room, but

he asked her put them all together on the centre table. She laughed and

complied.

For several weeks now, musical circles had been in a stir over the

advent of a new piano-teacher named Schrievers--a person who called

himself a pupil of Liszt, held progressive views, arid, being a free

lance, openly ridiculed the antiquated methods of the Conservatorium.

Madeleine was extremely interested in the case, and, as they sat

waiting, talked about it to Maurice with great warmth, enlarging

especially upon the number of people who had the audacity to call

themselves pupils of Liszt. To Maurice, in his present frame of mind,

the matter seemed of no possible consequence--for all he cared, the

whole population of the town might lay claim to having been at

Weimar--and he could not understand Madeleine finding it important. For

he was in one of those moods when the entire consciousness is so

intently directed towards some end that, outside this end, nothing has

colour or vitality: all that has previously impressed and interested

one, has no more solidity than papier mache. Meanwhile she spoke on,

and did not appear to notice how time was flying. He was forced at

length to take out his watch, and exclaim, in feigned surprise, at the

hour.

"A quarter to four already!"

"Is it so late?" But on seeing his disturbance, she added: "It will be

all right. Louise was never punctual in her life."

He did his best to look unconcerned, and they spoke of that evening's

ABENDUNTERHALTUNG, at which Furst was to play. But by the time the

clock struck four, Maurice had relapsed, in spite of himself, into

silence. Madeleine rallied him.

"You must make shift with my company, Maurice. Not but what I am sure

Louise will come. But you see from this what she is--the most

unreliable creature in the world."

To pass the time, she suggested that he should help her to make tea,

and they were both busy, when the electric bell in the passage whizzed

harshly, and the next moment there came a knock at the door. But it was

not Louise. Instead, two persons entered, one of whom was Heinrich

Krafft, the other a short, thickset girl, in a man's felt hat and a

closely buttoned ulster.

On recognising her visitors, Madeleine made a movement of annoyance,

and drew her brows together. "You, Heinz!" she said.

Undaunted by this greeting, Krafft advanced to her and, taking her

hands, kissed them, one after the other. He was also about to kiss her

on the lips, but she defended herself. "Stop! We are not alone."

"Just for that reason," said the girl in the ulster drily.

"What ill wind blows you here to-day?" Madeleine asked him.

As he was still wearing his hat, she took it off, and dropped it on the

floor beside him; then she recollected Maurice, and made him known to

the other two. Coming forward, Maurice recalled to Krafft's memory

where they had already met, and what had passed between them. Before he

had finished speaking, Krafft burst into an unmannerly peal of

laughter. Madeleine laughed, too, and shook her finger at him. "You

have been up to your tricks again!" Avery Hill, the girl in the ulster,

did not laugh aloud, but a smile played round her mouth, which Maurice

found even more disagreeable than the mirth of which he had been the

innocent cause. He coloured, and withdrew to the window.

Krafft was so convulsed that he was obliged to sit down on the sofa,

where Madeleine fanned him with a sheet of music. He had been seized by

a kind of paroxysm, and laughed on and on, in a mirthless way, till

Avery Hill said suddenly and angrily: "Stop laughing at once, Heinz!

You will have hysterics."

In an instant he was sobered, and now he seemed to fall, without

transition, into a mood of dejection. Taking out his penknife, he set

to paring his nails, in a precise and preoccupied manner. Madeleine

turned to Maurice.

"You'll wonder what all this is about," she said apologetically. "But

Heinz is never happier than when he has succeeded in imposing on some

one--as he evidently did on you."

"Indeed!" said Maurice. Their laughter had been offensive to him, and

he found Krafft, and Madeleine with him, exceedingly foolish.

There was a brief silence. Krafft was absorbed in what he was doing,

and Avery Hill, on sitting down, had lighted a cigarette, which she

smoked steadily, in long-drawn whiffs. She was a pretty girl, in spite

of her severe garb, in spite, too, of her expression, which was too

composed and too self-sure to be altogether pleasing. Her face was

fresh of skin, below smooth fair hair, and her lips were the red, ripe

lips of Botticelli's angels and Madonnas. But the under one, being

fuller than the other, gave the mouth a look of over-decision, and it

would be difficult to imagine anything less girlish than were the cold

grey eyes.

"We came for the book you promised to lend Heinz," she said, blowing

off the spike of ash that had accumulated at the tip of the cigarette.

"He could not rest till he had it."

Madeleine placed a saucer on the table with the request to use it as an

ash-tray, and taking down a volume of De Quincey from the hanging

shelf, held it out to Krafft.

"There you are. It will interest me to hear what you make of it."

Krafft ceased his paring to glance at the title-page. "I shall probably

not open it," he said.

Madeleine laughed, and gave him a light blow on the hand with the book.

"How like you that is! As soon as you know that you can get a thing,

you don't want it any longer."

"Yes, that's Heinz all over," said Avery Hill. "Only what he hasn't

got, seems worth having."

Krafft shut his knife with a click, and put it back in his pocket. "And

that's what you women can't understand, isn't it?--that the best of

things is the wishing for them. Once there, and they are nothing--only

another delusion. The happiest man is the man whose wishes are never

fulfilled. He always has a moon to cry for."

"Come, come now," said Madeleine. "We know your love for paradox. But

not to-day. There's no time for philosophising today. Besides, you are

in a pessimistic mood, and that's a bad sign."

"I and pessimism? Listen, heart of my heart, I have a new story for

you." He moved closer to her, and put his arm round her neck. "There

was once a man and his wife----"

But, at the first word, Madeleine put her hands to her ears.

"Mercy, have mercy, Heinz! No stories, I entreat you. And behave

yourself, too. Take your arm away." She tried to remove it. "I have

told you already, I can't have you here to-day. I'm expecting a

visitor."

He laid his head on her shoulder. "Let him come. Let the whole world

come. I don't budge. I am happy here."

"You must go and be happy elsewhere," said Madeleine more decisively

than she had yet spoken. "And before she comes, too."

"She? What she?"

"Never mind."

"For that very reason, Mada."

She whispered a word in his ear. He looked at her, incredulously at

first, then whimsically, with a sham dismay; and then, as if Maurice

had only just taken shape for him, he turned and looked at him also,

and from him to Madeleine, and back to him, finally bursting afresh

into a roar of laughter. Madeleine laid her hand over his mouth. "Take

him away, do," she said to Avery Hill--"as a favour to me."

"Yes, when I have finished my cigarette," said the girl without

stirring.

Unsettled all the same, it would seem, by what he had heard, Krafft

rose and shuffled about the room, with his hands in his pockets.

Approaching Maurice, he even stood for a moment and contemplated him,

with a kind of mock gravity. Maurice acted as if he did not see Krafft;

long since, he had taken up a magazine, and, half hidden in a chair

between window and writing-table, pretended to bury himself in its

contents. But he heard very plainly all that passed, and, at the effect

produced on Krafft by the name of the expected visitor, his hands

trembled with anger. If the fellow had stood looking at him for another

second, he would have got up and knocked him down. But Krafft turned

nonchalantly to the piano, where his attention was caught by a song

that was standing on the rack. He chuckled, and set about making

merciless fun of the music--the composer was an elderly

singing-teacher, of local fame. Madeleine grew angry, and tried to take

it from him.

"Hold your tongue, Heinz! If your own songs were more like this, they

would have a better chance of success. Now be quiet! I won't hear

another word. Herr Wendling is a very good friend of mine."

"A friend! Heavens! She says friend as if it were an excuse for

him.--Mada, let your friend cease making music if he hopes for

salvation. Let him buy a broom and sweep the streets--let him----"

"You are disgusting!"

She had got the music from him, but he was already at the piano,

parodying, from memory, the conventional accompaniment and sentimental

words of the song. "And this," he said, "from the learned ass who is

not yet convinced that the FEUERZAUBER is music, and who groans like a

dredge when the last act of SIEGFRIED is mentioned. Wendling and

Wagner! Listen to this!--for once, I am a full-blooded Wagnerite."

He felt after the chords that prelude Brunnhilde's awakening by

Siegfried. Until now, Avery Hill had sat indifferent, as though what

went on had nothing to do with her; but no sooner had Krafft commenced

to play than she grew uneasy; her eyes lost their cold assurance, and,

suddenly getting up and going round to the front of the piano, she

pushed the young man's hands from the keys. Krafft yielded his place to

her, and, taking up the chords where he had left them, she went on. She

played very well--even Maurice in his disturbance could, not but notice

it--with a firm, masculine touch, and that inborn ease, that enviable

appearance of perfect fitness, of being one with the instrument, which

even the greatest players do not always attain. She had, besides, grip

and rhythm, and long, close-knit hands insinuated themselves artfully

among the complicated harmonies.

When she began to play, Madeleine made "Tch, tch, tch!" and shook her

head, in despair of now ever being rid of them. Krafft remained

standing behind the piano at the window leaning his forehead on the

glass. Maurice, who watched them both surreptitiously, saw his face

change, and grow thoughtful as he stood there; but when Avery Hill

ceased abruptly on a discord, he wheeled round at once and patted her

on the back. While looking over to Maurice, he said: "No doubt you

found that very pretty and affecting?"

"I think that's none of your business," said Maurice.

But Krafft did not take umbrage. "You don't say so?" he murmured with a

show of surprise.

"Now, go, go, go!" cried Madeleine. "What have I done to be subjected

to such a visitation? No, Heinz, you don't sit down again. Here's your

hat. Away with you!--or I'll have you put out by force."

And at last they really did go, to a cool bow from Maurice, who still

sat holding his magazine. But Madeleine had hardly closed the door

behind them, when, like a whirlwind, Krafft burst into the room again.

"Mada, I forgot to ask you something," he said in a stage-whisper,

drawing her aside. "Tell me--you KUPPLERIN, you!--does he know her?" He

pointed over his shoulder with his thumb at Maurice.

Madeleine shook her head, in real vexation and distress, and laid a

finger on her lip. But it was of no use. Stepping over to Maurice,

Krafft bowed low, and held his hat against his breast.

"It is impossible for you to understand how deeply it has interested me

to meet you," he said. "Allow me, from the bottom of my heart, to wish

you success." Whereupon, before Maurice could say "damn!" he was gone

again, leaving his elfin laugh behind him in the air, like smoke.

Madeleine shut the door energetically and gave a sigh of relief.

"Thank goodness! I thought they would never go. And now, the chances

are, they'll run into Louise on the stairs. You'll wonder why I was so

bent on getting rid of them. It's a long story. I'll tell it to you

some other time. But if Louise had found them here when she came, she

would not have stayed. She won't have anything to do with Heinz."

"I don't wonder at it," said Maurice. He stood up and threw the

magazine on the table.

Madeleine displayed more astonishment than she felt. "Why what's the

matter? You're surely not going to take what Heinz said, seriously? He

was in a bad mood to-day, I know, and I noticed you were very short

with him. But you mustn't be foolish enough to be offended by him. No

one ever is. He is allowed to say and do just what he likes. He's our

spoilt child."

Maurice laughed. "The fellow is either a cad, or an unutterable fool.

You, Madeleine, may find his impertinence amusing. I tell you candidly,

I don't!" and he went on to make it clear to her that the fault would

not be his, were Krafft and he ever in the same room together again.

"The kind of man one wants to kick downstairs. What the deuce did he

mean by guffawing like that when you told him who was coming?"

"You mean about Louise?" Madeleine gave a slight shrug. "Yes,

Maurice--unfortunately that was not to be avoided. But sit down again,

and let me explain things to you. When you hear----"

But he did not want explanations; he did not even want an answer to the

question he had put; his chief concern now was to get away. To stay

there, in that room, for another quarter of an hour, would be

impossible, on such tenterhooks was he. To stay--for what? Only to

listen to more slanderous hints, of the kind he had heard before. As it

was, he did not believe he could face her frankly, should she still

come. He felt as if, in some occult way, he had assisted at a tampering

with her good name.

"You will surely not be so childish?" said Madeleine, on seeing him

take up his hat.

"Childish?--you call it childish?" he exclaimed, growing angry with

her, too. "Do you know what time it is? Three o'clock, you write me,

and it's now a quarter past five. I have sat here doing nothing for

over two mortal hours. It seems to me that's enough, without being made

the butt of your friends' wit into the bargain. I'm sick of the whole

thing. Good-bye."

"We seem bound to quarrel," said Madeleine calmly. "And always about

Louise. But there's no use in being angry. I am not responsible for

what Heinz says and does. And on the mere chance of his coming in

to-day, to sit down and unroll another savoury story to you, about your

idol--would you have thanked me for it? Remember the time I did try to

open you eyes!--It's not fair either to blame me because Louise hasn't

come. I did my best for you. I can't help it if she's as stable as

water."

"I think you dislike her too much to want to help it," said Maurice

grimly. He stood staring at the carnations, and his resentment gave way

to depression, as he recalled the mood which he had bought them.

"Come back as soon as you feel better. I'm not offended, remember!"

Madeleine called after him as he went down the stairs. When she was

alone, she said "Silly boy!" and, still smiling, made excuses for him:

he had come with such pleasurable anticipations, and everything had

gone wrong. Heinz had behaved disagracefully, as only he could. While

as for Louise, one was no more able to rely on her than on a wisp

straw; and she, Madeleine, was little better than a fool not to have

known it.

She moved about the room, putting chairs and papers in their places,

for she could not endure disorder of any kind. Then she sat down to

write a letter; and when, some half hour later, the girl for whom they

had waited, actually came, she met her with exclamations of genuine

surprise.

"Is it really you? I had given you up long ago. Pray, do you know what

time it is?"

She took out her watch and dangled it before the other's eyes. But

Louise Dufrayer hardly glanced at it. As, however, Madeleine persisted,

she said: "I'm late, I know. But it was not my fault. I couldn't get

away."

She unpinned her hat, and shook back her hair; and Madeleine helped her

to take off her jacket, talking all the time. "I have been much annoyed

with you. Does it never occur to you that you may put other people in

awkward positions, by not keeping your word? But you are just the same

as of old--incorrigible."

"Then why try to improve me?" said the other with a show of lightness.

But almost simultaneously she turned away from Madeleine's

matter-of-fact tone, passed her handkerchief over her lips, and after

making a vain attempt to control herself, burst into tears.

Madeleine eyed her shrewdly. "What's the matter with you?"

But the girl who had sunk into a corner of the sofa merely shook her

head, and sobbed; and Madeleine, to whom such emotional outbreaks were

distasteful, went to the writing-table and busied herself there, with

her back to the room. She did not ask for an explanation, nor did her

companion offer any.

Louise abandoned herself to her tears with as little restraint as

though she were alone, holding her handkerchief to her eyes with both

hands and giving deep, spasmodic sobs, which had apparently been held

for some time in cheek.

Afterwards, she sat with her elbow on the end of the sofa, her face on

her hand, and, still shaken at intervals by a convulsive breath,

watched Madeleine make fresh tea. But when she took the cup that was

handed to her, she was so far herself again as to inquire whom she was

to have met, although her voice still did not obey her properly.

"Some one who is anxious to know you," replied Madeleine an air of

mystery. "But he couldn't, or rather would not, wait so long."

Louise showed no further curiosity. But when Madeleine said with

meaning emphasis that Krafft had also been there in the course of the

afternoon, she shrank perceptibly and flushed.

"What! Does he still exist?" she asked with an effort at playfulness.

"As you very well know," answered Madeleine drily. "Tell me, Louise,

how do you manage to keep out of his way?"

Louise made no rejoinder; she raised her cup to her lips, and the dark

blood that had stained her face, in a manner distressing to see, slowly

retreated. She continued to look down, and, the light of her big, dark

eyes gone out, her face seemed wan and dead. Madeleine, studying her,

asked herself, not for the first time, but, as always, with an unclear

irritation, what the secret of the other's charm was. Beautiful she had

never thought Louise; she was not even pretty, in an honest way--at

best, a strange, foreign-looking creature, dark-skinned, black of eyes

and hair, with flashing teeth, and a wonderfully mobile mouth--and some

people, hopeless devotees of a pink and white fairness, had been known

to call her plain. At this moment, she was looking her worst; the

heavy, blue-black lines beneath her eyes were deepened by crying; her

rough hair had been hastily coiled, unbrushed; and she was wearing a

shabby red blouse that was pinned across in front, where a button was

missing. There was nothing young or fresh about her; she looked her

twenty-eight years, every day of them--and more.

And yet, Madeleine knew that those who admired Louise would find her as

desirable at this moment as at any other. Hers was a nameless charm; it

was present in each gesture of the slim hands, in each turn of the

head, in every movement of, the broad, slender body. Strangers felt it

instantly; her very walk seemed provocative of notice; there was

something in the way her skirts clung, and moved with her, that was

different from the motion of other women's. And those whose type she

embodied went crazy about her. Madeleine remembered as though it were

yesterday, the afternoon on which Heinz had burst in to rave to her of

his discovery; and how he would have dragged her out hatless to see

this miracle. She remembered, too, after--days, when she had had him

there, pacing the floor, and pouring out his feelings to her,

infatuated, mad. An he was not the only one; they bowled over like

ninepins; an it would be the same for years to come--was there any

reason to wonder at Maurice Guest?

Meanwhile, as Madeleine sat thinking these and similar things, Maurice

was tramping through the ROSENTAL. The May afternoon, of lucent

sunshine and heaped, fleecy clouds, had tempted a host of people into

the great park, but he soon left them all behind him, for he walked as

though he were pursued. These people, placid, and content of face, and

the brightness of the day, jarred on him; he was out of patience with

himself, with Madeleine, with the World at large. Especially with

Madeleine, he bore her a grudge for her hints and innuendoes, for being

behind the scenes, as it were, and also for being so ready to enlighten

him; but, most of all, for a certain malicious gratification, which was

to be felt in ever word she said about Louise.

He went steadily on, against the level bars of the afternoon sun and,

by the time he had tired himself bodily, he had worked off his inward

vexation as well. As he walked back towards the town, he was almost

ready to smile at his previous heat. What did all these others matter

to him? They could not hinder him from carrying through what he had set

his mind on. To-morrow was a day, and the next was another, and the

next again; and life, considered thus in days and opportunities, was

infinitely long.

He now felt not only an aversion to dwelling on his thoughts of an hour

back, but also the need of forgetting them altogether. And, in nearing

the LESSINGSTRASSE, he followed an impulse to go to Ephie and to let

her merry laugh wipe out the last traces of his ill-humour.

Mrs. Cayhill and Johanna were both reading in the sitting room, and

though Johanna agreeably laid aside her book, conversation languished.

Ephie was sent for, but did not come, and Maurice was beginning to wish

he had thought twice before calling, when her voice was heard in the

passage, and, a moment later, she burst into the room, with her arms

full of lilac, branches of lilac, which she explained had been bought

early that morning at the flower-market, by one of their

fellow-boarders. She hardly greeted Maurice, but going over to him held

up her scented burden, and was not content till he had buried his face

in it.

"Isn't it just sweet?" she cried holding it high for all to see. "And

the very first that is to be had. Again, Maurice again, put your face

right down into the middle of it--like that."

Mrs. Cayhill laughed, as Maurice obediently bowed his head, but Johanna

reproved her sister.

"Don't be silly, Ephie. You behave as if you had never seen lilac

before."

"Well, neither I have--not such lilac as this, and Maurice hasn't

either," answered Ephie. "You shall smell it too, old Joan!"--and in

spite of Johanna's protests, she forced her sister also to sink her

face in the fragrant white and purple blossoms. But then she left them

lying on the table, and it was Johanna who put them in water.

Mrs. Cayhill withdrew to her bedroom to be undisturbed, and Johanna

went out on an errand. Maurice and Ephie sat side by side on the sofa,

and he helped her to distinguish chords of the seventh, and watched her

make, in her music-book, the big, tailless notes, at which she herself

was always hugely tickled, they`reminded her so of eggs. But on this

particular evening, she was not in a studious mood, and bock, pencil

and india-rubber slid to the floor. Both windows were wide open; the

air that entered was full of pleasant scents, while that of the room

was heavy with lilac. Ephie had taken a spray from one of the vases,

and was playing with it; and when Maurice chid her for thoughtlessly

destroying it, she stuck the pieces in her hair. Not content with this,

she also put bits behind Maurice's ears, and tried to twist one in the

piece of hair that fell on his forehead. Having thus bedizened them,

she leaned back, and, with her hands clasped behind her head, began to

tease the young man. A little bird, it seemed, had whispered her any

number of interesting things about Madeleine and Maurice, and she had

stored them all up. Now, she repeated them, with a charming

impertinence, and was so provoking that, in laughing exasperation,

Maurice took her fluffy, flower-bedecked head between his hands, and

stopped her lips with two sound kisses.

He acted impulsively, without reflecting, but, as soon as it was done,

he felt a curious sense of satisfaction, which had nothing to do with

Ephie, and was like a kind of unconscious revenge taken on some one

else. He was not, however, prepared for the effect of his hasty deed.

Ephie turned scarlet, and jumping up from the sofa, so that all the

blossoms fell from her hair at once, stamped her foot.

"Maurice Guest! How dare you!" she cried angrily, and, to his surprise,

the young man saw that she had tears in her eyes.

He had never known Ephie to be even annoyed, and was consequently

dumfounded; he could not believe, after the direct provocation she had

given him, that his crime had been so great.

"But Ephie dear!" he protested. "I had no idea, upon my word I hadn't,

that you would take it like this. What's the matter? It was nothing.

Don't cry. I'm a brute."

"Yes, you are, a horrid brute! I shall never forgive you--never!" said

Ephie, and then she began to cry in earnest.

He put his arm round her, and coaxing her to sit down, wiped away her

tears with his own handkerchief. In vain did he beg her to tell him why

she was so vexed. To all he said, she only shook her head, and

answered: "You had no right to do it."

He vowed solemnly that it should never happen again, but at least a

quarter of an hour elapsed before he succeeded in comforting her, and

even then, she remained more subdued than usual. But when Maurice had

gone, and she had dropped the scattered sprays of lilac out of the

window on his head, she clasped her hands at the back of her neck, and

dropped a curtsy to herself in the locking-glass.

"Him, too!" she said aloud.

She nodded at her reflected self, but her face was grave; for between

these two, small, blue-robed figures was a deep and unsuspected secret.

And Maurice, as he walked away, wondered to himself for still a little

why she should have been so disproportionately angry; but not for long;

for, when he was not actually with Ephie, he was not given to thinking

much about her. Besides, from there, he went straight to the latter

half of an ABENDANTERKALTUNG, to hear Furst play Brahms' VARIATIONS ON

A THEME BY HANDEL

VIII.

That night he had a vivid dream. He dreamt that he was in a garden,

where nothing but lilac grew--grew with a luxuriance he could not have

believed possible, and on fantastic bushes: there were bushes like

steeples and bushes smaller than himself, big and little, broad and

slender, but all were of lilac, and in flower--an extravagant profusion

of white and purple blossoms. He gazed round him in delight, and took

an eager step forward; but, before he could reach the nearest bush, he

saw that it had been an illusion: the bush was stripped and bare, and

the rest were bare as well. "You're too late. It has all been

gathered," he heard a voice say, and at this moment, he saw Ephie at

the end of a long alley of bushes, coming towards him, her arms full of

lilac. She smiled and nodded to him over it, and he heard her laugh,

but when she was half-way down the path, he discovered his mistake: it

was not Ephie but Louise. She came slowly forward, her laden arms

outstretched, and he would have given his life to be able to advance

and to take what she offered him; but he could not stir, could not lift

hand or foot, and his tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. Her steps

grew more hesitating, she seemed hardly to move; and then, just as she

reached the spot where he stood, he found that it was not she after

all, but Madeleine, who laughed at his disappointment and said: "I'm

not offended, remember!"--The revulsion of feeling was too great; he

turned away, without taking the flowers she held out to him--and awoke.

This dream was present to him all the morning, like a melody that

haunts and recalls. But he worked more laboriously than usual; for he

was aggrieved with himself for having idled away the previous

afternoon, and then, too, Furst's playing had made a profound

impression on him. In vigorous imitation, he sat down to the piano

again, after a hasty dinner snatched in the neighbourhood; but as he

was only playing scales, he propped open before him a little volume of

Goethe's poems, which Johanna had lent him, and suiting his scales to

the metre of the lines, read through one after another of the poems he

liked best. At a particular favourite, he stopped playing and held the

book in both hands.

He had hardly begun anew when the door of his room was unceremoniously

opened, and Dove entered, in the jocose way he adopted when in a rosy

mood. Maurice made a movement to conceal his book, merely in order to

avoid the explanation he new must follow; but was too late; Dove had

espied it. He did not belie himself on this occasion; he was extremely

astonished to find Maurice "still at it," but much more so to see a

book open before him; and he vented his surprise loudly and wordily.

"Liszt used to read the newspaper," said Maurice, for the sake of

saying something. He had swung round in the piano-chair, and he yawned

as he spoke, without attempting to disguise it.

"Why, yes, of course, why not?" agreed Dove cordially, afraid lest he

had seemed discouraging. "Why not, indeed? For those who can do it. I

wish I could. But will you believe me, Guest"--here he seated himself,

and settled into an attitude for talking, one hand inserted between his

crossed knees--"will you believe me, when I say I find it a difficult

business to read at all?--at any time. I find it too stimulating, too

ANREGEND, don't you know? I assure you, for weeks now, I have been

trying to read PAST AND PRESENT, and have not yet got beyond the first

page. It gives one so much to think about, opens up so many new ideas,

that I stop myself and say: 'Old fellow, that must be digested.' This,

I see, is poetry"--he ran quickly and disparagingly through Maurice's

little volume, and laid it down again. "I don't care much for poetry

myself, or for novels either. There's so much in life worth knowing

that is true, or of some use to one; and besides, as we all know, fact

is stranger than fiction."

They spoke also of Furst's performance the evening before, and Dove

gave it its due, although he could not conceal his opinion that Furst's

star would ultimately pale before that of a new-comer to the town, a

late addition to the list of Schwarz's pupils, whom he, Dove, had been

"putting up to things a bit." This was a "Manchester man" and former

pupil of Halle's, and it would certainly not be long before he set the

place in a stir. Dove had just come from his lodgings, where he had

been permitted to sit and hear him practise finger-exercises.

"A touch like velvet," declared Dove. "And a stretch!--I have never

seen anything like it. He spans a tenth, nay, an eleventh, more easily

than we do an octave."

The object of Dove's visit was, it transpired, to propose that Maurice

should accompany him that evening to the theatre, where DIE WALKURE was

to be performed; and as, on this day, Dove had reasons for seeing the

world through rose-coloured glasses, he suggested, out of the fulness

of his heart, that they should also invite Madeleine to join them.

Maurice was nothing loath to have the meeting with her over, and so,

though it was not quite three o'clock, they went together to the

MOZARTSTRASSE.

They found Madeleine before her writing-table, which was strewn with

closely written sheets. This was mail-day for America, she explained,

and begged the young men to excuse her finishing an important letter to

an American journalist, with whom she had once "chummed up" on a trip

to Italy.

"One never knows when these people may be of use to one," she was

accustomed to say.

Having addressed and stamped the envelope, and tossed it to the others,

she rose and gave a hand to each. At Maurice, she smiled in a

significant way.

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

Maurice laid an imploring finger on his lips, but Dove had seized the

opportunity of glancing at his cravat in the mirror, and did not seem

to hear.

She agreed willingly to their plan of going to the theatre; she had

thought of it herself; then, a girl she knew had asked her to come to

hear her play in ENSEMBLESPIEL.

"However, I will let that slip. Schelper and Moran-Olden are to sing;

it will be a fine performance. I suppose some one is to be there," she

said laughingly to Dove, "or you would not be of the party."

But Dove only smiled and looked sly.

Without delay, Madeleine began to detail to Maurice, the leading

motives on which the WALKURE was built up; and Dove, having hummed,

strummed and whistled all those he knew by heart, settled down to a

discourse on the legitimacy and development of the motive, and

especially in how far it was to be considered a purely intellectual

implement. He spoke with the utmost good-nature, and was so unconscious

of being a bore that it was impossible to take him amiss. Madeleine,

however, could not resist, from time to time, throwing in a "Really!"

"How extraordinary!" "You don't say so!" among his abstruse remarks.

But her sarcasm was lost on Dove; and even if he had noticed it, he

would only have smiled, unhit, being too sensible and good-humoured

easily to take offence.

It was always a mystery to his friends where Dove got his information;

he was never seen to read, and there was little theorising about art,

little but the practical knowledge of it, in the circles to which he

belonged. But just as he went about picking up small items of gossip,

so he also gathered in stray scraps of thought and information, and

being by nature endowed with an excellent memory, he let nothing that

he had once heard escape him. He had, besides, the talker's gift of

neatly stringing together these tags he had pulled off other people, of

connecting them, and giving them a varnish of originality.

"By no means a fool," Madeleine was in the habit of saying of him. "He

would be easier to deal with if he were."

Here, on the leading motive as handled by Wagner and Wagner's

forerunners, he had an unwritten treatise ripe in his brain. But he had

only just compared the individual motives to the lettered ribbons that

issue from the mouths of the figures in medieval pictures, and began to

hint at the IDEE FIXE of Berlioz, when he was interrupted by a knock at

the door.

"HEREIN!" cried Madeleine in her clear voice; and at the sight of the

person who opened the door, Maurice involuntarily started up from his

chair, and taking his stand behind it, held the back of it firmly with

both hands, in self-defence.

It was Louise.

On seeing the two young men, she hesitated, and, with the door-handle

still in her hand, smiled a faint questioning smile at Madeleine,

raising her eyebrows and showing a thin line of white between her lips.

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

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

And so Louise entered, and came forward to the table at which they had

been sitting; but before anything further could be said, she raised her

arms to catch up a piece of hair which had fallen loose on her neck.

The young men were standing, waiting to greet her, Maurice still behind

his chair; but she did not hurry on their account, or "just on their

account did not hurry," as Madeleine mentally remarked.

Both watched Louise, and followed her movements. To their eyes, she

appeared to be very simply dressed; it was only Madeleine who

appreciated the cost and care of this seeming simplicity. She wore a

plain, close-fitting black dress, of a smooth, shiny stuff, which

obeyed and emphasised the lines and outlines of her body; and, as she

stood, with her arms upraised, composedly aware of being observed, they

could see the line of her side rising and falling with the rise and

fall of each breath. Otherwise, she wore a large black hat, with

feathers and an overhanging brim, which threw shadows on her face, and

made her eyes seem darker than ever.

Letting her arms drop with a sigh of relief, she shook hands with Dove,

and Dove--to Madeleine's diversion and Maurice's intense

disgust--introduced Maurice to her as his friend. She looked full at

the latter, and held out her hand; but before he could take it, she

withdrew it again, and put both it and her left hand behind her back.

"No, no," she said. "I mustn't shake hands with you to-day. Today is

Friday. And to give one's hand for the first time on a Friday would

bring bad luck--to you, if not to me."

She was serious, but both the others laughed, and Maurice, having let

his outstretched hand fall, coloured, and smiled rather foolishly. She

did not seem to notice his discomfiture; turning to Madeleine, she

began to speak of a piece of music she wished to borrow; and then

Maurice had a chance of observing her at his ease, and of listening to

her voice, in which he heard all manner of impossible things. But while

Madeleine, with Dove's assistance, was looking through a pile of music,

Louise came suddenly up to him and said: "You are not offended with me,

are you?" She had a low voice, with a childish cadence in it, which

touched him like a caress.

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

She stared at him, openly astonished, not only at his words, but also

at the tone in which they were said; and the strange, fervent gaze bent

on her by this man whom she saw for the first time in her life,

confused her and made her uneasy. Slowly and coldly she turned away,

but Madeleine, who was charitably occupying Dove as long as she could,

did not take any notice of her. And as the young man continued to stare

at her, she looked out of the window at the lowering grey sky, and

said, with a shudder: "What a day for June!"

All eyes followed hers, Maurice's with the rest; but almost instantly

he brought them back again to her face.

"Louise is a true Southerner," said Madeleine; "and is wretched if

there's a cloud in the sky."

Louise smiled, and he saw her strong white teeth. "It's not quite as

bad as that," she said; and then, although herself not clear why she

should have answered these searching eyes, she added, looking at

Maurice: "I come from Australia."

If she had said she was a visitant from another world, Maurice would

not, at the moment, have felt much surprise; but on hearing the name of

this distant land, on which he would probably never set foot, a sense

of desolation overcame him. He realised anew, with a pang, what an

utter stranger he was to her; of her past life, her home, her country,

he knew and could know nothing.

"That is very far away," he said, speaking out of this feeling, and

then was vexed with himself for having done so. His words sounded

foolish as they lingered on in the stillness that followed them, and

would, he believed, lay him open to Madeleine's ridicule. But he had

not much time in which to repent of them; the music had been found, and

she was going again. He heard her refuse an invitation to stay: she had

an engagement at half-past four. And now Dove, who, throughout, had

kept in the background, looked at his watch and took up his hat: he had

previously offered, unopposed, to do the long wait outside the theatre,

which was necessary when one had no tickets, and now it was time to go.

But when Louise heard the word theatre, she laid a slim, ungloved hand

on Dove's arm.

"The very thing for such a night!"

They all said "AUF WIEDERSEHEN!" to one another; she did not offer to

shake hands again, and Maurice nursed a faint hope that it was on his

account. He opened the window, leant out, and watched them, until they

went round the corner of the street.

Madeleine smiled shrewdly behind his back, but when he turned, she was

grave. She did not make any reference to what had passed, nor did she,

as he feared she would, put questions to him: instead, she showed him a

song of Krafft's, and asked him to play the accompaniment for her. He

gratefully consented, without knowing what he was undertaking. For the

song, a setting of a poem by Lenau, was nominally in C sharp minor; but

it was black with accidentals, and passed through many keys before it

came to a close in D flat major. Besides this, the right hand had much

hard passage-work in quaint scales and broken octaves, to a syncopated

bass of chords that were adapted to the stretch of no ordinary hand.

"LIEBLOS UND OHNE GOTT AUF EINER HAIDE," sang Madeleine on the high F

sharp; but Maurice, having collected neither his wits nor his fingers,

began blunderingly, could not right himself, and after scrambling

through a few bars, came to a dead stop, and let his hands fall from

the keys.

"Not to-day, Madeleine."

She laughed good-naturedly. "Very well--not to-day. One shouldn't ask

you to believe to-day that DIE GANZE WELT IST ZUM VERZWEIFELN TRAURIG."

While she made tea, he returned to the window, where he stood with his

hands in his pockets, lost in thought. He told himself once more what

he found it impossible to believe: that he was going to see Louise

again in a few hours; and not only to see her, but to speak to her, to

be at her side. And when his jubilation at this had subsided, he went

over in memory all that had just taken place. His first impression, he

could afford now to admit it, had been almost one of disappointment:

that came from having dreamed so long of a shadowy being, whom he had

called by her name, that the real she was a stranger to him. Everything

about her had been different from what he had expected--her voice, her

smile, her gestures--and in the first moments of their meeting, he had

been chill with fear, lest--lest ... even yet he did not venture to

think out the thought. But this first sensation of strangeness over, he

had found her more charming, more desirable, than even he had hoped;

and what almost wrung a cry of pleasure from him as he remembered it,

was that not the smallest trifle--no touch of coquetry, no insincerely

spoken word--had marred the perfect impression of the whole. To know

her, to stand before her, he recognised it now, gave the lie to false

slander and report. Hardest of all, however, was it to grasp that the

meeting had actually come to pass and was over: it had been so

ordinary, so everyday, the most natural thing in the world; there had

been no blast of trumpets, nor had any occult sympathy warned her that

she was in the presence of one who had trembled for weeks at the idea

of this moment and again he leaned forward and gazed at the spot in the

street, where she had disappeared from sight. He was filled with envy

of Dove--this was the latter's reward for his unfailing readiness to

oblige others--and in fancy he saw Dove walking street after street at

her side.

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

first corner.

On any other day, Dove would have been still more prompt to take leave

of his companion; but, on this particular one, he was in the mood to be

a little reckless. In the morning, he had received, with a delightful

shock, his first letter from Ephie, a very frank, warmly written note,

in which she relied on his great kindness to secure her, WITHOUT

FAIL--these words were deeply underscored--two places in the PARQUET of

the theatre, for that evening's performance. Not the letter alone, but

also its confiding tone, and the reliance it placed in him, had touched

Dove to a deep pleasure; he had been one of the first to arrive at the

box-office that morning, and, although he had not ventured, unasked, to

take himself a seat beside the sisters, he was now living in the

anticipation of promenading the FOYER with them in the intervals

between the acts, and of afterwards escorting them home.

On leaving Louise he made for the theatre with a swinging stride--had

he been in the country, stick in hand, he would have slashed off the

heads of innumerable green and flowering things. As it was, he

whistled--an unusual thing for him to do in the street--then assumed

the air of a man hard pressed for time. Gradually the passers-by began

to look at him with the right amount of attention; he jostled, as if by

accident, one or two of those who were unobservant, then apologised for

his hurry. It was not pleasurable anticipation alone that was

responsible for Dove's state of mind, and for the heightening and

radiation of his self-consciousness. In offering to go early to the

theatre, and to stand at the doors for at least three-quarters of an

hour, in order that the others, coming considerably later might still

have a chance of gaining their favourite seats: in doing this, Dove was

not actuated by a wholly unselfish motive, but by the more complicated

one, which, consciously or unconsciously, was present beneath all the

friendly cares and attentions he bestowed on people. He was never more

content with himself, and with the world at large, than when he felt

that he was essential to the comfort and well-being of some of his

fellow-mortals; than when he, so to speak, had a finger in the pie of

their existence. It engendered a sense of importance, gave life fulness

and variety; and this far outweighed the trifling inconveniences such

welldoing implied. Indeed, he throve on them. For, in his mild way,

Dove had a touch of Caesarean mania--of a lust for power.

Left to herself, Louise Dufrayer walked slowly home to her room in the

BRUDERSTRASSE, but only to throw a hasty look round. It was just as she

had expected: although it was long past the appointed time, he was not

there. At a flower-shop in a big adjoining street, she bought a bunch

of many-coloured roses, and with these in her hands, went straight to

where Schilsky lived.

Mounting to the third floor of the house in the TALSTRASSE, she opened,

without ceremony, the door of his room, which gave direct on the

landing; but so stealthily that the young man, who was sitting with his

back to the door, did not hear her enter. Before he could turn, she had

sprung forward, her arms were round his neck, and the roses under his

nose. He drew his face away from their damp fragrance, but did not look

up, and, without removing his cigarette, asked in a tone of extreme bad

temper: "What are you doing here, Lulu? What nonsense is this? For

God's sake, shut the door!"

She ruffled his hair with her lips. "You didn't come. And the day has

seemed so long."

He tried to free himself, putting the roses aside with one hand, while,

with his cigarette, he pointed to the sheets of music-paper that lay

before him. "For a very good reason. I've had no time."

She went back and closed the door; and then, sitting down on his knee,

unpinned her big hat, and threw it and the roses on the bed. He put his

arm round her to steady her, and as soon as he held her to him, his

ill-temper was vanquished. He talked volubly of the instrumentation he

was busy with. But she, who could point out almost every fresh note he

put on paper, saw plainly that he had not been at work for more than a

quarter of an hour; and, in a miserable swell of doubt and jealousy,

such as she could never subdue, she asked: