The Lion's Share

THE IMMINENT DRIVE

“Oh!” cried Miss Thompkins. “You can see it from here. It’s funny how unreal it seems, isn’t it?”

She pointed at one of the large white-curtained windows of the restaurant, through which was visible a round column covered with advertisements of theatres, music-halls, and concert-halls, printed in many colours and announcing superlative delights. Names famous wherever pleasure is understood gave to their variegated posters a pleasant air of distinguished familiarity—names of theatres such as “Variétés,” “Vaudeville,” “Châtelet,” “Théâtre Français,” “Folies-Bergère,” and names of persons such as “Sarah Bernhardt,” “Huegenet,” “Le Bargy,” “Litvinne,” “Lavallière.” But the name in the largest type—dark crimson letters on rose paper—the name dominating all the rest, was the name of Musa. The ingenuous stranger to Paris was compelled to think that as an artist Musa was far more important than anybody else. Along the length of all the principal boulevards, and in many of the lesser streets, the ingenuous stranger encountered, at regular distances of a couple of hundred yards or so, one of these columns planted on the kerb; and all the scores of them bore exactly the same legend; they all spoke of nothing but blissful diversions, and they all put Musa ahead of anybody else in the world of the stage and the platform. Sarah Bernhardt herself, dark blue upon pale, was a trifle compared to Musa on the columns. And it had been so for days. Other posters were changed daily—changed by mysterious hands before even bread-girls were afoot with their yards of bread—but the space given to Musa repeated always the same tidings, namely that Musa ("the great violinist") was to give an orchestral concert at the Salle Xavier, assisted by the Xavier orchestra, on Thursday, September 24, at 9 P.M. Particulars of the programme followed.

Paris was being familiarised with Musa. His four letters looked down upon the fever of the thoroughfares; they were perused by tens of thousands of sitters in cafés and in front of cafés; they caught the eye of men and women fleeing from the wrath to come in taxicabs; they competed successfully with newspaper placards; and on that Thursday—for the Thursday in question had already run more than half its course—they had so entered into the sub-conscious brain of Paris that no habitué of the streets, whatever his ignorant indifference to the art of music, could have failed to reply with knowledge, on hearing Musa mentioned, “Oh, yes!” implying that he was fully acquainted with the existence of the said Musa.

Tommy was right: there did seem to be a certain unreality about the thing, yet it was utterly real.

All the women turned to glance at the name through the window, and some of them murmured sympathetic and interested exclamations and bright hopes. There were five women: Miss Thompkins, Miss Nickall, Madame Piriac, Miss Ingate and Audrey. And there was one man—Mr. Gilman. And the six were seated at a round table in the historic Parisian restaurant. Mr. Gilman had the air triumphant, and he was entitled to it. The supreme moment of his triumph had come. Having given a luncheon to these ladies, he had just asked, with due high negligence, for the bill. If there was one matter in which Mr. Gilman was a truly great expert, it was the matter of giving a meal in a restaurant. He knew how to dress for such an affair—with strict conventionality but a touch of devil-may-care youthfulness in the necktie. He knew how to choose the restaurant; he had about half a dozen in his répertoire—all of the first order and for the most part combining the exclusive with the amusing—entirely different in kind from the pandemonium where Audrey had eaten on the night of her first arrival in Paris; he knew how to get the best out of head-waiters and waiters, who in these restaurants were not head-waiters and waiters but worldly priests and acolytes; his profound knowledge of cookery sprang from a genuine interest in his stomach, and he could compose a menu in a fashion to command the respect of head-waiters and to excite the envy of musicians composing a sonata; he had the wit to look in early and see to the flowers; above all he was aware what women liked in the way of wine, and since this was never what he liked in the way of wine, he would always command a half-bottle of the extra dry for himself, but would have it manipulated with such discretion that not a guest could notice it. He paid lavishly and willingly, convinced by hard experience that the best is inestimable, but he felt too that the best was really quite cheap, for he knew that there were imperfectly educated people in the world who thought nothing of paying the price of a good meal for a mere engraving or a bit of china. Withal, he never expected his guests truly to appreciate the marvels he offered them. They could not, or very rarely. Their twittering ecstatic praise, which was without understanding, sufficed for him, though sometimes he would give gentle diffident instruction. This trait in him was very attractive, proving the genuineness of his modesty.

The luncheon was partly to celebrate the return of various persons to Paris, but chiefly in honour of Musa’s concert. Musa could not be present, for distinguished public performers do not show themselves on the day of an appearance. Mr. Gilman had learnt this from Madame Piriac, whom he had consulted as to the list of guests. It is to be said that he bore the absence of Musa from his table with stoicism. For the rest, Madame Piriac knew that he wanted no other men, and she had suggested none. She had assumed that he desired Audrey, and had pointed out that Audrey could not well be invited without Miss Ingate, who, sick of her old Moze, had rejoined Audrey in the splendour of the Hôtel du Danube. Mr. Gilman had somehow mentioned Miss Thompkins, whereupon Madame Piriac had declared that Miss Thompkins involved Miss Nickall, who after a complete recovery from the broken arm had returned for a while to her studio. And then Mr. Gilman had closed the list, saying that six was enough, and exactly the right number.

“At what o’clock are you going for the drive?” asked Madame Piriac in her improved, precise English. She looked equally at her self-styled uncle and at Audrey.

“I ordered the car for three o’clock,” answered Mr. Gilman. “It is not yet quite three.”

The table with its litter of ash-trays, empty cups, empty small glasses, and ravaged sweets, and the half-deserted restaurant, and the polite expectant weariness of the priests and acolytes, all showed that the hour was in fact not quite three—an hour at which such interiors have invariably the aspect of roses overblown and about to tumble to pieces.

And immediately upon the reference to the drive everybody at the table displayed a little constraint, avoiding the gaze of everybody else, thus demonstrating that the imminent drive was a delicate, without being a disagreeable, topic. Which requires explanation.

Mr. Gilman had not been seen by any of his guests during the summer. He had landed them at Boulogne from the Ariadne—sound but for one casualty. That casualty was Jane Foley, suffering from pneumonia, which had presumably developed during the evening of exposure spent with Aguilar in the leaking punt and in rain showers. Madame Piriac and Audrey took her to Wimereux and there nursed her through a long and sometimes dangerous illness. Jane possessed no constitution, but she had obstinacy, which saved her. In her convalescence, part of which she spent alone with Audrey (Madame Piriac having to pay visits to Monsieur Piriac), she had proceeded with the writing of a book, and she had also received in conclave the rarely seen Rosamund, who like herself was still a fugitive from British justice. These two had been elaborating a new plan of campaign, which was to include an incursion by themselves into England, and which had in part been confided by Jane to Audrey, who, having other notions in her head, had been somewhat troubled thereby. Audrey’s conscience had occasionally told her to throw herself heartily into the campaign, but her individualistic instincts had in the end kept her safely on a fence between the campaign and something else. The something else was connected with Mr. Gilman.

Mr. Gilman had written to her regularly; he had sent dazzling subscriptions to the Suffragette Union; and Audrey had replied regularly. His letters were very simple, very modest, and quite touching. They were dated from various coastal places. However, he never came near Wimereux, though it was a coastal place. Audrey had excusably deemed this odd; but Madame Piriac having once said with marked casualness, “I hinted to him that he might with advantage stay away,” Audrey had concealed her thoughts on the point. And one of her thoughts was that Madame Piriac was keeping them apart so as to try them, so as to test their mutual feelings. The policy, if it was a policy, was very like Madame Piriac; it had the effect of investing Mr. Gilman in Audrey’s mind with a peculiar romantic and wistful charm, as of a sighing and obedient victim. Then Jane Foley and Rosamund had gone off somewhere, and Madame Piriac and Audrey had returned to Paris, and had found that practically all Paris had returned to Paris too. And on the first meeting with Mr. Gilman it had been at once established that his feelings and those of Audrey had surmounted the Piriac test. Within forty-eight hours all persons interested had mysteriously assumed that Mr. Gilman and Audrey were coupled together by fate and that a delicious crisis was about to supervene in their earthly progress. And they had become objects of exquisite solicitude. They had also become perfect. A circle of friends and acquaintances waited in excited silence for a palpitating event, as a populace waits for the booming gunfire which is to inaugurate a national rejoicing. And when the news exuded that he was taking her for a drive to Meudon, which she had never seen, alone, all decided beyond any doubt that he would do it during the drive.

Hence the nice constraint at the table when the drive grew publicly and avowedly imminent.

Audrey, as the phrase is, “felt her position keenly,” but not unpleasantly, nor with understanding. Not a word had passed of late between herself and Mr. Gilman that any acquaintance might not have listened to. Indeed, Mr. Gilman had become slightly more formal. She liked him for that, as she liked him for a large number of qualities. She did not know whether she loved him. And strange to say, the question did not passionately interest her. The only really interesting questions were: Would he propose to her? And would she accept him? She had no logical ground for assuming that he would propose to her. None of her friends had informed her of the general expectation that he would propose to her. Yet she knew that everybody expected him to propose to her quite soon—indeed within the next couple of hours. And she felt that everybody was right. The universe was full of mysteries for Audrey. As regards her answer to any proposal, she foresaw—another mystery—that it would not depend upon self-examination or upon reason, or upon anything that could be defined. It would depend upon an instinct over which her mind—nay, even her heart—had no control. She was quite certainly aware that this instinct would instruct her brain to instruct her lips to say “Yes.” The idea of saying “No” simply could not be conceived. All the forces in the universe would combine to prevent her from saying “No.”

The one thing that might have countered that enigmatic and powerful instinct was a consideration based upon the difference between her age and that of Mr. Gilman. It is true that she did not know what the difference was, because she did not know Mr. Gilman’s age. And she could not ask him. No! Such is the structure of society that she could not say to Mr. Gilman, “By the way, Mr. Gilman, how old are you?” She could properly ascertain his tastes about all manner of fundamental points, such as the shape of chair-legs, the correct hour for dining, or the comparative merits of diamonds and emeralds; but this trifle of information about his age could not be asked for. And he did not make her a present of it. She might have questioned Madame Piriac, but she could not persuade herself to question Madame Piriac either. However, what did it matter? Even if she learnt his age to a day, he would still be precisely the same Mr. Gilman. And let him be as old or as young as he might, she was still his equal in age. She was far more than six months older than she had been six months ago.

The influence of Madame Piriac through the summer had indirectly matured her. For above all Madame Piriac had imperceptibly taught her the everlasting joy and duty of exciting the sympathy, admiration and gratitude of the other sex. Hence Audrey had aged at a miraculous rate because in order to please Mr. Gilman she wished—possibly without knowing it—to undo the disparity between herself and him. This may be strange, but it is assuredly more true than strange. To the same ends she had concealed her own age. Nobody except Miss Ingate knew how old she was. She only made it clear, when doubts seemed to exist, that she had passed her majority long before. Further, her wealth, magnified by legend, assisted her age. Not that she was so impressed by her wealth as she had been. She had met American women in Paris compared to whom she was at destitution’s door. She knew one woman who had kept a 2,000-ton yacht lying all summer in the outer harbour at Boulogne, and had used it during that period for exactly eleven hours.

Few of these people had an establishment. They would rent floors in hotels, or châteaux in Touraine, or yachts, but they had no home, and yet they seemed very content and beyond doubt they were very free. And so Audrey did not trouble about having a home. She had Moze, which was more than many of her acquaintances had. She would not use it, but she had it. And she was content in the knowledge of the power to create a home when she felt inclined to create one. Not that it would not have been absurd to set about creating a home with Mr. Gilman hanging over her like a destiny. It would have been rude to him to do so; it would have been to transgress against the inter-sexual code as promulgated by Madame Piriac.... She wondered what sort of a place Meudon was, and whether he would propose to her while they were looking at the view together.... She trembled with the sense of adventure, which had little to do with happiness or unhappiness.... But would he propose to her? Not improbably the whole conception of the situation was false and she was being ridiculous!

Still the nice constraint persisted as the women began to put on their gloves, while Mr. Gilman had a word with the chief priest. And Audrey had the illusion of being a dedicated victim. As she self-consciously and yet proudly handled her gloves she could not help but notice the simple gold wedding-ring on a certain finger. She had never removed it. She had never formally renounced her claim to the status of a widow. That she was not a widow, that she had been guilty of a fraud on a gullible public, was somehow generally known; but the facts were not referred to, save perhaps in rare hints by Tommy, and she had continued to be known as Mrs. Moncreiff. Ignominious close to a daring enterprise! And in the circumstances nothing was more out of place than the ring, bought in cold, wilful, calculating naughtiness at Colchester.

Just when Miss Ingate was beginning to discuss her own plans for the afternoon, Mr. Price entered the restaurant, and as he did so Miss Thompkins, saying something about the small type on the poster outside, went to the window to examine it. Mr. Price, disguised as a discreet dandy-about-town, bore a parcel of music. He removed a most glossy hat; he bowed to the whole company of ladies, who responded with smiles in which was acknowledge that he was a dandy in addition to being a secretary; and lastly with deference he handed the parcel of music to Mr. Gilman.

“So you did get it! What did I tell you?” said Mr. Gilman with negligent condescension. “A minute later, and we should have been gone.... Has Mr. Price got this right?” he asked Audrey, putting the music respectfully in front of her.

It included the reduced score of the Beethoven violin concerto, and other items to be performed that night at the Salle Xavier.

“Oh! Thank you, Mr. Price!” said Audrey. The music was so fresh and glossy and luscious to the eye that it was like a gift of fruit.

“That’ll do, then, Price,” said Mr. Gilman. “Don’t forget about those things for to-night, will you?”

“No, sir. I have a note of all of them.”

Mr. Price bowed and turned away, assuming his perfect hat. As he approached the door Tommy intercepted him; and said something to him in a low voice, to which he uncomfortably mumbled a reply. As they had admittedly been friends in Mr. Price’s artistic days, exception could not be taken to this colloquy. Nevertheless Audrey, being as suspicious as a real widow, regarded it ill, thinking all manner of things. And when Tommy, humming, came back to her seat on Mr. Gilman’s left hand, Audrey thought: “And why, after all, should she be on his left hand? It is of course proper that I should be on his right, but why should Tommy be on his left? Why not Madame Piriac or Miss Ingate?”

“And what am I going to do this afternoon?” demanded Miss Ingate, lengthening the space between her nose and her upper lip, and turning down the corners of her lower lip.

“You have to try that new dress on, Winnie,” said Audrey rather reprovingly.

“Alone? Me go alone there? I wouldn’t do it. It’s not respectable the way they look at you and add you up and question you in those trying-on rooms, when they’ve got you.”

“Well, take Elise with you.”

“Me take Elise? I won’t do it, not unless I could keep her mouth full of pins all the time. Whenever we’re alone, and her mouth isn’t full of pins, she always talks to me as if I was an actress. And I’m not.”

“Well, then,” said Miss Nickall kindly, “come with me and Tommy. We haven’t anything to do, and I’m taking Tommy to see Jane Foley. Jane would love to see you.”

“She might,” replied Miss Ingate. “Oh! She might. But I think I’ll walk across to the hotel and just go to bed and sleep it off.”

“Sleep what off?” asked Tommy, with necklace rattling and orchidaceous eyes glittering.

“Oh! Everything! Everything!” shrieked Miss Ingate.

There was one other customer left in the restaurant, a solitary fair, fat man, and as Mr. Gilman’s party was leaving, Audrey last, this solitary fair, fat man caught her eye, bowed, and rose. It was Mr. Cowl, secretary of the National Reformation Society. He greeted her with the assurance of an old and valued friend, and he called her neither Miss nor Mrs.; he called her nothing at all. Audrey accepted his lead.

“And is your Society still alive?” she asked with casual polite disdain.

“Going strong!” said Mr. Cowl. “More flourishing than ever—in spite of our bad luck.” He lifted his sandy-coloured eyebrows. “Of course I’m here on Society business. In fact, I often have to come to Paris on Society business.” His glance deprecated the appearance of the table over which his rounded form was protruding.

“Well, I’m glad to have seen you again,” said Audrey, holding out her hand.

“I wonder,” said Mr. Cowl, drawing some tickets from his pocket. “I wonder whether you—and your friends—would care to go to a concert to-night at the Salle Xavier. The concierge at my hotel is giving tickets away, and I took some—rather to oblige him than anything else. For one never knows when a concierge may not be useful. I don’t suppose it will be anything great, but it will pass the time, and—er—strangers in Paris——”

“Thank you, Mr. Cowl, but I’m not a stranger in Paris. I live here.”

“Oh! I beg your pardon,” said Mr. Cowl. “Excuse me. Then you won’t take them? Pity! I hate to see anything wasted.”

Audrey was both desolated and infuriated.

“Remember me respectfully to Miss Ingate, please,” finished Mr. Cowl. “She didn’t see me as she passed.”

He returned the tickets to his pocket.

Outside, Madame Piriac, standing by her automobile, which had rolled up with the silence of an hallucination, took leave of Audrey.

“Eh bien! Au revoir!“ said she shortly, with a peculiar challenging half-smile, which seemed to be saying, “Are you going to be worthy of my education? Let us hope so.”

And Miss Nickall, with her grey hair growing fluffier under a somewhat rakish hat, said with a smile of sheer intense watchful benevolence:

“Well, good-bye!”

While Nick was ecstatically thanking Mr. Gilman for his hospitality, Tommy called Audrey aside. Madame Piriac’s car had vanished.

“Have you heard about the rehearsal this morning?” she asked, in a confidential tone, anxious and yet quizzical.

“No! What about it?” Audrey demanded. Various apprehensions were competing for attention in her brain. The episode of Mr. Cowl had agitated her considerably. And now she was standing right against the column bearing Musa’s name in those large letters, and other columns up and down the gay, busy street echoed clear the name. And how unreal it was!... Tickets being given away in half-dozens!... She ought to have been profoundly disturbed by such a revelation, and she was. But here was the drive with Mr. Gilman insisting on a monopoly of all her faculties. And on the top of everything—Tommy with her strange gaze and tone! Tommy carefully hesitated before replying.

“He lost his temper and left it in the middle—orchestra and conductor and Xavier and all! And he swore he wouldn’t play to-night.”

“Nonsense!”

“Yes, he did.”

“Who told you?”

Already the two women were addressing each other as foes.

“A man I know in the orchestra.”

“Why didn’t you tell us at once—when you came?”

“Well, I didn’t want to spoil the luncheon. But of course I ought to have done. You, at any rate, seeing your interest in the concert! I’m sorry.”

“My interest in the concert?” Audrey objected.

“Well, my girl,” said Tommy, half cajolingly and half threateningly, “you aren’t going to stand there and tell me to my face that you haven’t put up that concert for him?”

“Put up the concert! Put up the——” Audrey knew she was blushing.

“Paid for it! Paid for it!” said Tommy, with impatience.

GENIUS AT BAY

Audrey got away from the group in front of the restaurant with stammering words and crimson confusion. She ran. She stopped a taxi and stumbled into it. There remained with her vividly the vision of the startled, entirely puzzled face of Mr. Gilman, who in an instant had been transformed from a happy, dignified and excusably self-satisfied human male into an outraged rebel whose grievance had overwhelmed his dignity. She had said hurriedly: “Please excuse me not coming with you. But Tommy says something’s happened to Musa, and I must go and see. It’s very important.” And that was all she had said. Had she asked him to drive her to Musa’s, Mr. Gilman would have been very pleased to do so; but she did not think of that till it was too late. Her precipitancy had been terrible, and had staggered even Tommy. She had no idea how the group would arrange itself. And she had no very clear idea as to what was wrong with Musa or how matters stood in regard to the concert. Tommy had asserted that she did not know whether the orchestra and its conductor meant to be at their desks in the evening just as though nothing whatever had occurred at the rehearsal. All was vague, and all was disturbing. She had asked Tommy the authority for her assertion that she, Audrey, was financing the concert. To which Tommy had replied that she had “guessed, of course.” And seeing that Audrey had only interviewed a concert agent once—and he a London concert agent with relations in Paris —and that she had never uttered a word about the affair to anybody except Mr. Foulger, who had been keeping an eye on the expenditure, it was not improbable that Tommy had just guessed. But she had guessed right. She was an uncanny woman. “Have you ever spoken to Musa about—it?” Audrey had passionately demanded; and Tommy had answered also passionately: “Of course not. I’m a white woman all through. Haven’t you learnt that yet?”

The taxi, although it was a horse-taxi and incapable of moving at more than five miles an hour, reached the Rue Cassette, which was on the other side of the river and quite a long way off, in no time. That is to say, Audrey was not aware that any time had passed. She had received the address from Tommy, for it was a new address, Musa having admittedly risen in the world. The house was an old one; it had a curious staircase, with china knobs on the principal banisters of the rail, and crimson-tasselled bell cords at all the doors of the flats. Musa lived at the summit of it. Audrey arrived there short of breath, took the crimson-tasselled cord in her hand to pull, and then hesitated in order to think.

Why had she come? The response was clear. She had come solely because she hated to see a job botched, and there was not a moment to lose if it was not to be botched. She had come, not because she had the slightest sympathetic interest in Musa—on the contrary, she was coldly angry with him—but because she had a horror of fiascos. She had found a genius who needed financing, and she, possessing some tons of money, had financed him, and she did not mean to see an ounce of her money wasted if she could help it. Her interest in the affair was artistic and impersonal, and none other. It was the duty of wealthy magnates to foster art, and she was fostering art, and she would have the thing done neatly and completely, or she would know the reason. Fancy a rational creature making a scene at a final rehearsal and swearing that he would not play, and then bolting! It was monstrous! People really did not do such things. Assuredly no artist had ever done such a thing before. Artists who had a concert all to themselves invariably appeared according to advertised promise. An artist who was only one among several in a programme might fall ill and fail to appear, for such artists are liable to the accidents of earthly existence. But an artist who shared the programme with nobody else was above the accidents of earthly existence and magically protected against colds, coughs, influenza, orange peel, automobiles, and all the other enemies of mankind. But, of course, Musa was peculiar, erratic and unpredictable beyond even the wide range granted by society to genius. And yet of late he had been behaving himself in a marvellous manner. He had never bothered her. On the voyage back to France he had not bothered her. They had separated with punctilious cordiality. Neither of them had written to the other, but she knew that he was working diligently and satisfactorily. He was apparently cured of her. It was perhaps due to the seeming completeness of his cure that her relations with Mr. Gilman had been what they were. ... And now, suddenly, this!

So with clear conscience she pulled the bell cord.

Musa himself opened the door. He was coatless and in a dressing-gown, under which showed glimpses of a new smartness. As soon as he saw her he went very pale.

“Bon jour,” she said.

He repeated the phrase stiffly.

“Can I come in?” she asked.

He silently signified, with a certain annoying resignation, that she might. For one instant she was under a tremendous impulse to walk grandly and haughtily down the stairs. But she conquered the impulse. He was so pale.

“This way, excuse me,” he said, and preceded her along a short, narrow passage which ended in an open door leading into a small room. There was no carpet on the floor of the passage, and only a quite inadequate rug on the floor of the room. The furniture was scanty and poor. There was a table, a music stand, a cheap imitation of a Louis Quatorze chair, two other chairs, and some piles of music. No curtains to the window! Not a picture on the walls! On the table a dusty disorder of small objects, including ash-trays, and towards the back of it a little account book, open, with a pencil on it and a low pile of coppers and a silver ten-sou piece on the top of the coppers. Nevertheless this interior represented a novel luxuriousness for Musa; for previously, as Audrey knew, he had lived in one room, and there was no bed here. The flat, indeed, actually comprised three rooms. The account book and the pitiful heap of coins touched her. She had expended much on the enterprise of launching him to glory, and those coins seemed to be all that had filtered through to him. The whole dwelling was pathetic, and she thought of the splendours of her own daily life, of the absolute unimportance to her of such sums as would keep Musa in content for a year or for ten years, and of the grandiose, majestic, dazzling career of herself and Mr. Gilman when their respective fortunes should be joined together. And she mysteriously saw Mr. Gilman’s face again, and that too was pathetic. Everything was pathetic. She alone seemed to be hard, dominating, overbearing. Her conscience waked to fresh activity. Was she losing her soul? Where were her ideals? Could she really work in full honesty for the feminist cause as the wife of a man like Mr. Gilman? He was adorable: she felt in that moment that she had a genuine affection for him; but could Mrs. Gilman challenge the police, retort audaciously upon magistrates, and lie in prison? In a word, could she be a martyr? Would Mr. Gilman, with all his amenability, consent? Would she herself consent? Would it not be ridiculous? Thus her flying, shamed thoughts in front of the waiting Musa!

“Then you aren’t ill?” she began.

“Ill!” he exclaimed. “Why do you wish that I should be ill?”

As he answered her he removed his open fiddle case, with the violin inside it, from the Louis Quatorze chair, and signed to her to sit down. She sat down.

“I heard that—this morning—at the rehearsal——”

“Ah! You have heard that?”

“And I thought perhaps you were ill. So I came to see.”

“What have you heard?”

“Frankly, Musa, it is said that you said you would not play to-night.”

“Does it concern you?”

“It concerns everyone.... And you have been so good lately.”

“Ah! I have been good lately. You have heard that. And did you expect me to continue to be good when you returned to Paris and passed all your days in public with that antique and grotesque Monsieur Gilman? All the world sees you. I myself have seen you. It is horrible.”

She controlled herself. And the fact that she was intensely flattered helped her to do so.

“Now Musa,” she said, firmly and kindly, as on previous occasions she had spoken to him. “Do be reasonable. I refuse to be angry, and it is impossible for you to insult me, however much you try. But do be reasonable. Do think of the future. We are all wishing for your success. We shall all be there. And now you say you aren’t going to play. It is really too much.”

“You have perhaps bought tickets,” said Musa, and a flush gradually spread over his cheeks. “You have perhaps bought tickets, and you are afraid lest you have been robbed. Tranquillise yourself, Madame. If you have the least fear, I will instruct my agent to reimburse you. And why should I not play? Naturally I shall play. Accept my word, if you can.” He spoke with an icy and convincing decision.

“Oh, I’m so glad!” Audrey murmured.

“What right have you to be glad, Madame? If you are glad it is your own affair. Have I troubled you since we last met? I need the sympathy of nobody. I am assured of a large audience. My impresario is excessively optimistic. And if this is so, I owe it to none but myself. You speak of insults. Permit me to say that I regard your patronage as an insult. I have done nothing, I imagine, to deserve it. I crack my head to divine what I have done to deserve it. You hear some silly talk about a rehearsal and you precipitate yourself chez moi—”

Without a word Audrey rose and departed. He followed her to the door and held it open.

“Bon jour, Madame.”

She descended the stairs. Perhaps it was his sudden illogical change of tone; perhaps it was the memory of his phrase, “assured of a large audience,” coupled with a picture of the sinister Mr. Cowl unsuccessfully trying to give away tickets—but whatever was the origin of the sob, she did give a sob. As she walked downcast through the courtyard she heard clearly the sounds of Musa’s violin, played with savage vigour.

FINANCIAL NEWS

The Salle Xavier, or Xavier Hall, had been built, with other people’s money, by Xavier in order to force the general public to do something which the general public does not want to do and never would do of its own accord. Namely, to listen to high-class music. It had not been built, and it was not run, strange to say, to advertise a certain brand of piano. Xavier was an old Jew, of surpassing ugliness, from Cracow or some such place. He looked a rascal, and he was one—admittedly; he himself would imply it, if not crudely admit it. He had no personal interest in music, either high-class or low-class. But he possessed a gift for languages and he had mixed a great deal with musicians in an informal manner. Wagner, at Venice, had once threatened Xavier with a stick, and also Xavier had twice run away with great exponents of the rôle of Isolde. His competence as a connoisseur of Wagner’s music, and of the proper methods of rendering Wagner’s music, could therefore not be questioned, and it was not questioned.

He had a habit of initiating grandiose schemes for opera or concerts and of obtaining money therefor from wealthy amateurs. After a few months he would return the money less ten per cent. for preliminary expenses and plus his regrets that the schemes had unhappily fallen through owing to unforeseen difficulties. And wealthy amateurs were so astonished to get ninety per cent. of their money back from a rascal that they thought him almost an honest man, asked him to dinner, and listened sympathetically to details of his next grandiose scheme. The Xavier Hall was one of the few schemes—and the only real estate scheme—that had ever gone through. With the hall for a centre, Xavier laid daily his plans and conspiracies for persuading the public against its will. To this end he employed in large numbers clerks, printers, bill posters, ticket agents, doorkeepers, programme writers, programme sellers, charwomen, and even artists. He always had some new dodge or hope. The hall was let several times a week for concerts or other entertainments, and many of them were private speculations of Xavier. They were nearly all failures. And the hall, thoroughly accustomed to seeing itself half empty, did not pay interest on its capital. How could it? Upon occasions there had actually been more persons in the orchestra than in the audience. Seated in the foyer, with one eye upon a shabby programme girl and another upon the street outside, Xavier would sometimes refer to these facts in conversation with a titled patron, and would describe the public realistically and without pretence of illusion. Nevertheless, Xavier had grown to be a rich man, for percentages were his hourly food; he received them even from programme sellers. At nine o’clock the hall was rather less than half full, and this was rightly regarded as very promising, for the management, like the management of every place of distraction in Paris, held it a point of honour to start from twenty to thirty minutes late—as though all Parisians had many ages ago decided that in Paris one could not be punctual, and that, long since tired of waiting for each other, they had entered into a competition to make each other wait, the individual who arrived last being universally regarded as the winner. The members of the orchestra were filing negligently in from the back of the vast terraced platform, yawning, and ravaged by the fearful ennui of eternal high-class music. They entered in dozens and scores, and they kept on entering, and as they gazed inimically at each other, fingering their instruments, their pale faces seemed to be asking: “Why should it be necessary to collect so many of us in order to prove that just one single human being can play the violin? We can all play the violin, or something else just as good. And we have all been geniuses in our time.”

In strong contrast to their fatigued and disastrous indifference was the demeanour of a considerable group of demonstrators in the gallery. This body had crossed the Seine from the sacred Quarter, and, not owning a wardrobe sufficiently impressive to entitle it to ask for free seats, it had paid for its seats. Hence naturally its seats were the worst in the hall. But the group did not care. It was capable of exciting itself about high-class music. Moreover it had, for that night, an article of religious faith, to wit, that Musa was the greatest violinist that had ever lived or ever could live, and it was determined to prove this article of faith by sheer force of hands and feet. Therefore it was very happy, and just a little noisy.

In the main part of the hall the audience could be divided into two species, one less numerous than the other. First, the devotees of music, who went to nearly every concert, extremely knowing, extremely blasé, extremely disdainful and fastidious, with precise views about every musical composition, every conductor, and every performer; weary of melodious nights at which the same melodies were ever heard, but addicted to them, as some people are addicted to vices equally deleterious. These devotees would have had trouble with their conscience or their instincts had they not, by coming to the concert, put themselves in a position to affirm exactly and positively what manner of a performer Musa was. They had no hope of being pleased by him. Indeed they knew beforehand that he was yet another false star, but they had to ascertain the truth for themselves, because—you see—there was a slight chance that he might be a genuine star, in which case their careers would have been ruined had they not been able to say to succeeding generations: “I was at his first concert. It was a memorable,” etc. etc. They were an emaciated tribe, and in fact had the air of mummies temporarily revived and escaped out of museums. They were shabby, but not with the gallery shabbiness; they were shabby because shabbiness was part of their unworldly refinement; and it did not matter—they would have got their free seats even if they had come in sacks and cerements.

The second main division of the audience—and the larger—consisted of the jolly pleasure seekers, who had dined well, who respected Beethoven no more than Oscar Straus, and who demanded only one boon—not to be bored. They had full dimpled cheeks, and they were adequately attired, and they dropped cigarettes with reluctance in the foyer, and they entered adventurously with marked courage, well aware that they had come to something queer and dangerous, something that was neither a revue nor a musical comedy, and, while hoping optimistically for the best, determined to march boldly out again in the event of the worst. They had seven mortal evenings a week to dispose of somehow, and occasionally they were obliged to take risks. Their expressions for the most part had that condescension which is characteristic of those who take a risk without being paid for it.

All around the hall ran a horseshoe of private boxes, between the balcony and the gallery. These boxes gradually filled. At a quarter-past nine over half of them were occupied; which fact, combined with the stylishness of the hats in them, proved that Xavier had immense skill in certain directions, and that on that night, for some reason or other, he had been doing his very best.

At twenty minutes past nine the audience had coalesced and become an entity, and the group from the Quarter was stamping an imitation of the first bars of the C minor Symphony, to indicate that further delay might involve complications.

Audrey sat with Miss Ingate modestly and inconspicuously in the fifth row of the stalls. Miss Ingate, prodigious in crimson, was in a state of beatitude, because she never went to concerts and imagined that she had inadvertently slipped into heaven. The mere size of the orchestra so overwhelmed her that she was convinced that it was an orchestra specially enlarged to meet the unique importance of Musa’s genius. “They must think highly of him!” she said. She employed the time in looking about her. She had already found, besides many other Anglo-Saxon acquaintances, Rosamund, in black, Tommy with Nick, and Mr. Cowl, who was one seat to Audrey’s left in the sixth row of the stalls. Also Mr. Gilman and Madame Piriac and Monsieur Piriac in a double box. Audrey and herself ought to have been in that box, and had the afternoon developed otherwise they probably would have been in that box. Fortunately at the luncheon, Audrey, who had bought various lots of seats, had with the strange cautiousness of a young girl left herself free to utilise or not to utilise the offered hospitality of Mr. Gilman’s double box, and Mr. Gilman had not pressed her for a decision. Was it not important that the hall should seem as full as possible? When Miss Ingate, pushing her investigations farther, had discovered not merely Monsieur Dauphin, but Mr. Ziegler, late of Frinton and now resident in Paris, her cup was full.

“It’s vehy wonderful, vehy wonderful!” said she.

But it was Audrey who most deeply had the sense of the wonderfulness of the thing. For it was Audrey who had created it. Having months ago comprehended that a formal and splendid debut was necessary for Musa if he was to succeed within a reasonable space of time, she had willed the debut within her own brain. She alone had thought of it. And now the realisation seemed to her to be absolutely a miracle. Had she read of such an affair a year earlier in a newspaper—with the words “Paris,” “tout Paris,” “young genius,” and so on—she would have pictured it as gloriously, thrillingly romantic, and it indeed was gloriously and thrillingly romantic. She thought: “None of these people sitting around me know that I have brought it about, and that it is all mine.” The thought was sweet. She felt like an invisible African genie out of the Thousand and One Nights.

And yet what had she done to bring it about? Nothing, simply nothing, except to command it! She had not even signed cheques. Mr. Foulger had signed the cheques! Mr. Foulger, who set down the whole enterprise as incomprehensible lunacy! Mr. Foulger, who had never been to aught but a smoking-concert in his life, and who could not pronounce the name of Beethoven without hesitations! The great deed had cost money, and it would cost more money; it would probably cost four hundred pounds ere it was finished with. An extravagant sum, but Xavier had motor-cars and toys even more expensive than motor-cars to keep up! Audrey, however, considered it a small sum, compared to the terrific spectacular effect obtained. And she was right. The attributes of money seemed entirely magical to her. And she was right again. She respected money with a new respect. And she respected herself for using money with such large grandeur.

And withal she was most horribly nervous, just as nervous as though it was she who was doomed to face the indifferent and exacting audience with nothing but a violin bow for weapon. She was so nervous that she could not listen, could not even follow Miss Ingate’s simple remarks; she heard them as from a long distance, and grasped them after a long interval. Still, she was uplifted, doughty, and proud. The humiliation of the afternoon had vanished like a mist. Nay, she felt glad that Musa had behaved to her just as he did behave. His mien pleased her; his wounding words, each of which she clearly remembered, were a source of delight. She had never admired him so much. She had now no resentment against him. He had proved that her hopes of him were, after all, well justified. He would succeed. Only some silly and improbable accident could stop him from succeeding. She was not nervous about his success. She was nervous for him. She became him. She tuned his fiddle, gathered herself together and walked on to the platform, bowed to the dim multitudinous heads in front of him, looked at the conductor, waited for the opening bars, drew his bow across his strings at precisely the correct second, and heard the resulting sound under her ear. And all that before the conductor had appeared! Such were the manifestations of her purely personal desire for the achievement of a neat, clean job.

“See!” said Miss Ingate. “Mr. Gilman is bowing to us. He does look splendid, and isn’t Madame Piriac lovely? I must say I don’t care so much for these French husbands.”

Audrey had to turn and join Miss Ingate in acknowledging the elaborate bow. At any rate, then, Mr. Gilman had not been utterly estranged by her capricious abandonment of him. And why should he be? He was a man of sense; he would understand perfectly when she explained to-morrow. Further, he was her slave. She was sure of him. She would apologise to him. She would richly recompense him by smiles and honey and charming persuasive simplicity. And he would see that with all her innocent and modest ingenuousness she was capable of acting seriously and effectively in a sudden crisis. She would rise higher in his esteem. As for the foreseen proposal, well——

A sporadic clapping wakened her out of those reflections. The conductor was approaching his desk. The orchestra applauded him. He tapped the desk and raised his stick. And there was a loud noise, the thumping of her heart. The concert had begun. Musa was still invisible—what was he doing at that instant, somewhere behind?—but the concert had begun. Stars do not take part in the first item of an orchestral concert. There is a convention that they shall be preluded; and Musa was preluded by the overture to Die Meistersinger. In the soft second section of the overture, a most noticeable babble came from a stage-box. “Oh! It’s the Foas,” muttered Miss Ingate. “What a lot of people are fussing around them!” “Hsh!” frowned Audrey, outraged by the interruption. Madame Foa took about fifty bars in which to settle herself, and Monsieur Foa chattered to people behind him as freely as if he had been in a café Nobody seemed to mind.

The overture was applauded, but Madame Foa, instead of applauding, leaned gracefully back, smiling, and waved somebody to the seat beside her.

Violent demonstrations from the gallery!... He was there, tripping down the stepped pathway between the drums. The demonstrations grew general. The orchestra applauded after its own fashion. He reached the conductor, smiled at the conductor and bowed very admirably. He seemed to be absolutely at his ease. Then there was a delay. The conductor’s scores had got themselves mixed up. It was dreadful. It was enough to make a woman shriek.

“I say!” said a voice in Audrey’s ear. She turned as if shot. Mr. Cowl’s round face was close to hers. “I suppose you saw the New York Herald this morning.”

“No,” answered Audrey impatiently.

The orchestra started the Beethoven violin Concerto. But Mr. Cowl kept his course.

“Didn’t you?” he said. “About the Zacatecas Oil Corporation? It’s under a receivership. It’s gone smash. I’ve had an idea for some time it would. All due to these Mexican revolutions. I thought you might like to know.”

Musa’s bow hung firmly over the strings.

INTERVAL

The most sinister feature of entertainments organised by Xavier was the intervals. Xavier laid stress on intervals; they gave repose, and in many cases they saved money. All Paris managers are inclined to give to the interval the importance of a star turn, and Xavier in this respect surpassed his rivals, though he perhaps regarded his cloak-rooms, which were organised to cause the largest possible amount of inconvenience to the largest possible number of people, as his surest financial buttress. Xavier could or would never see the close resemblance of intervals to wet blankets, extinguishers, palls and hostile critics. The Allegro movement of the Concerto was a real success, and the audience as a whole would have applauded even more if the gallery in particular had not applauded so much. The second or Larghetto movement was also a success, but to a less degree. As for the third and last movement, it put the gallery into an ecstasy while leaving the floor in possession of full critical faculties. Musa retired and had to return, and when he returned the floor good-humouredly joined the vociferous gallery in laudations, and he had to return again. Then the interminable interval. Silence! Murmurings! Silence! Creepings towards exits! And in many, very many hearts the secret trouble question: “Why are we here? What have we come for? What is all this pother about art and genius? Honestly, shall we not be glad and relieved when the solemn old thing is over?"... And the desolating, cynical indifference of the conductor and the orchestra! Often there is a clearer vision of the truth during the intervals of a classical concert than on a deathbed.

Audrey was extremely depressed in the interval after the Beethoven Concerto and before the Lalo. But she was not depressed by the news of the accident to the Zacatecas Oil Corporation in which was the major part of her wealth. The tidings had stunned rather than injured that part of her which was capable of being affected by finance. She had not felt the blow. Moreover she was protected by the knowledge that she had thousands of pounds in hand and also the Moze property intact, and further she was already reconsidering her newly-acquired respect for money. No! What depressed her was a doubt as to the genius of Musa. In the long dreadful pause it seemed impossible that he should have genius. The entire concert presented itself as a grotesque farce, of which she as its creator ought to be ashamed. She was ready to kill Xavier or his responsible representative.

Then she saw the tall and calm Rosamund, with her grey hair and black attire and her subduing self-complacency, making a way between the rows of stalls towards her.

“I wanted to see you,” said Rosamund, after the formal greetings. “Very much.” Her voice was as kind and as unrelenting as the grave.

At this point Miss Ingate ought to have yielded her seat to the terrific Rosamund, but she failed to do so, doubtless by inadvertence.

“Will you come into the foyer for a moment?” Rosamund inflexibly suggested.

“Isn’t the interval nearly over?” said Audrey.

“Oh, no!”

And as a fact there was not the slightest sign of the interval being nearly over. Audrey obediently rose. But the invitation had been so conspicuously addressed to herself that Miss Ingate, gathering her wits, remained in her chair.

The foyer—decorated in the Cracovian taste—was dotted with cigarette smokers and with those who had fled from the interval. Rosamund did not sit down; she did not try for seclusion in a corner. She stepped well into the foyer, and then stood still, and absently lighted a cigarette, omitting to offer a cigarette to Audrey. Rosamund’s air of a deaconess made the cigarette extremely remarkable.

“I wanted to tell you about Jane Foley,” began Rosamund quietly. “Have you heard?”

“No! What?”

“Of course you haven’t. I alone knew. She has run away to England.”

“Run away! But she’ll be caught!”

“She may be. But that is not all. She has run away to get married. She dared not tell me. She wrote me. She put the letter in the manuscript of the last chapter but one of her book, which I am revising for her. She will almost certainly be caught if she tries to get married in her own name. Therefore she will get married in a false name. All this, however, is not what I wanted to tell you about.”

“Then you shouldn’t have begun to talk about it,” said Audrey suddenly. “Did you expect me to let you leave it in the middle! Jane getting married! I do think she might have told me.... What next, I wonder! I suppose you’ve—er—lost her now?”

“Not entirely, I believe,” said Rosamund. “Certainly not entirely. But of course I could never trust her again. This is the worst blow I have ever had. She says—but why go into that? Well, she does say she will work as hard as ever, nearly; and that her future husband strongly supports us—and so on.” Rosamund smiled with complete detachment.

“And who’s he?” Audrey demanded.

“His name is Aguilar,” said Rosamund. “So she says.”

“Aguilar?”

“Yes. I gather—I say I gather—that he belongs to the industrial class. But of course that is precisely the class that Jane springs from. Odd! Is it not? Heredity, I presume.” She raised her shoulders.

Audrey said nothing. She was too shocked to speak—not pained or outraged, but simply shaken. What in the name of Juno could Jane see in Aguilar? Jane, to whom every man was the hereditary enemy! Aguilar, who had no use for either man or woman! Aguilar, a man without a Christian name, one of those men in connection with whom a Christian name is impossibly ridiculous. How should she, Audrey, address Aguilar in future? Would he have to be asked to tea? These vital questions naturally transcended all others in Audrey’s mind.... Still (she veered round), it was perhaps after all just the union that might have been expected.

“And now,” said Rosamund at length, “I have a question to put to you.”

“Well?”

“I don’t want a definite answer here and now.” She looked round disdainfully at the foyer. “But I do want to set your mind on the right track at the earliest possible moment—before any accidents occur.” She smiled satirically. “You see how frank I am with you. I’ll be more frank still, and tell you that I came to this concert to-night specially to see you.”

“Did you?” Audrey murmured. “Well!”

The older woman looked down upon her from a superior height. Her eyes were those of an autocrat. It was quite possible to see in them the born leader who had dominated thousands of women and played a drawn game with the British Government itself. But Audrey, at the very moment when she was feeling the overbearing magic of that gaze, happened to remember the scene in Madame Piriac’s automobile on the night of her first arrival in Paris, when she herself was asleep and Rosamund, not knowing that she was asleep, had been solemnly addressing her. Miss Ingate’s often repeated account of the scene always made her laugh, and the memory of it now caused her to smile faintly.

“I want to suggest to you,” Rosamund proceeded, “that you begin to work for me.”

“For the suffrage—or for you?”

“It is the same thing,” said Rosamund coldly. “I am the suffrage. Without me the cause would not have existed to-day.”

“Well,” said Audrey, “of course I will. I have done a bit already, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” Rosamund admitted. “You did very well at the Blue City. That’s why I’m approaching you. That’s why I’ve chosen you.”

“Chosen me for what?”

“You know that a new great campaign will soon begin. It is all arranged. It will necessitate my returning to England and challenging the police. You know also that Jane Foley was to have been my lieutenant-in-chief—for the active part of the operation. You will admit that I can no longer count on her completely. Will you take her place?”

“I’ll help,” said Audrey. “I’ll do what I can. I dare say I shan’t have much money, because one of those ’accidents’ you mentioned has happened to me already.”

“That need not trouble you,” replied Rosamund imperturbable. “I have always been able to get all the money that was needed.”

“Well, I’ll help all I can.”

“That’s not what I ask,” said Rosamund inflexibly. “Will you take Jane Foley’s place? Will you give yourself utterly?”

Audrey answered with sudden vehemence:

“No, I won’t. You didn’t want a definite answer, but there it is.”

“But surely you believe in the cause?”

“Yes.”

“It’s the greatest of all causes.”

“I’m rather inclined to think it is.”

“Why not give yourself, then? You are free. I have given myself, my child.”

“Yes,” said Audrey, who resented the appellation of “child.” “But, you see, it’s your hobby.”

“My hobby, Mrs. Moncreiff!” exclaimed Rosamund.

“Certainly, your hobby,” Audrey persisted.

“I have sacrificed everything to it,” said Rosamund.

“Pardon me,” said Audrey. “I don’t think you’ve sacrificed anything to it. You just enjoy bossing other people above everything, and it gives you every chance to boss. And you enjoy plots too, and look at the chances you get for that’. Mind you, I like you for it. I think you’re splendid. Only I don’t want to be a monomaniac, and I won’t be.” Her convictions seemed to have become suddenly clear and absolutely decided.

“Do you mean to infer that I am a monomaniac?” asked Rosamund, raising her eyebrows—but only a little.

“Well,” said Audrey, “as you mentioned frankness—what else would you call yourself but a monomaniac? You only live for one thing—don’t you, now?”

“It is the greatest thing.”

“I don’t say it isn’t,” Audrey admitted. “But I’ve been thinking a good deal about all this, and at last I’ve come to the conclusion that one thing-isn’t enough for me, not nearly enough. And I’m not going to be peculiar at any price. Neither a fanatic nor a monomaniac, nor anything like that.”

“You are in love,” asserted Rosamund.

“And what if I am? If you ask me, I think a girl who isn’t in love ought to be somewhat ashamed of herself, or at least sorry for herself. And I am sorry for myself, because I am not in love. I wish I was. Why shouldn’t I be? It must be lovely to be in love. If I was in love I shouldn’t be only in love. You think you understand what girls are nowadays, but you don’t. I didn’t myself until just lately. But I’m beginning to. Girls were supposed to be only interested in one thing—in your time. Monomaniacs, that’s what they had to be. You changed all that, or you’re trying to change it, but you only mean women to be monomaniacs about something else. It isn’t good enough. I want everything, and I’m going to get it—or have a good try for it. I’ll never be a martyr if I can help it. And I believe I can help it. I believe I’ve got just enough common sense to save me from being a martyr —either to a husband or a house or family—or a cause. I want to have a husband and a house and a family, and a cause too. That’ll be just about everything, won’t it? And if you imagine I can’t look after all of them at once, all I can say is I don’t agree with you. Because I’ve got an idea I can. Supposing I had all these things, I fancy I could have a tiff with my husband and make it up, play with my children, alter a dress, change the furniture, tackle the servants, and go out to a meeting and perhaps have a difficulty with the police—all in one day. Only if I did get into trouble with the police I should pay the fine—you see. The police aren’t going to have me altogether. Nobody is. Nobody, man or woman, is going to be able to boast that he’s got me altogether. You think you’re independent. But you aren’t. We girls will show you what independence is.”

“You’re a rather surprising young creature,” observed Rosamund with a casual air, unmoved. “You’re quite excited.”

“Yes. I surprise myself. But these things do come in bursts. I’ve noticed that before. They weren’t clear when you began to talk. They’re clear now.”

“Let me tell you this,” said Rosamund. “A cause must have martyrs.”

“I don’t see it,” Audrey protested. “I should have thought common sense would be lots more useful than martyrs. And monomaniacs never do have common sense.”

“You’re very young.”

“Is that meant for an insult, or is it just a statement?” Audrey laughed pleasantly.

And Rosamund laughed too.

“It’s just a statement,” said she.

“Well, here’s another statement,” said Audrey. “You’re very old. That’s where I have the advantage of you. Still, tell me what I can do in your new campaign, and I’ll do it if I can. But there isn’t going to be any utterly —that’s all.”

“I think the interval is over,” said Rosamund with finality. “Perhaps we’d better adjourn.”

The foyer had nearly emptied. The distant sound of music could be heard.

As she was re-entering the hall, Audrey met Mr. Cowl, who was coming out.

“I have decided I can’t stand any more,” Mr. Cowl remarked in a loud whisper. “I hope you didn’t mind me telling you about the Zacatecas. As I said, I thought you might be interested. Good-bye. So pleasant to have met you again, dear lady.” His face had the same enigmatic smile which had made him so formidable at Moze.

Musa had already begun to play the Spanish Symphony of Lalo, without which no genius is permitted to make his formal debut on the violin in France.