Chapter XXVI: Part III: dove il Sol tace (7)

"Help her?" echoed Madeleine in a testy way; she was one of those who thought that the dead girl might have shown more consideration for her friends, standing, as they did, immediately before their PRUFUNGEN. "Could one help her ever having set eyes on that attractive scoundrel?-- And besides, it's easy enough thinking afterwards, one might have been able to help, to do this and that. It's a mistake. People don't want help; and they don't give you a thank-you for offering it. All they ask is to be let alone, to muddle and bungle their lives as they like."

As they walked home together, Miss Jensen returned once more to the subject of Krafft's failings.

"I've known many men," she said, "one more credulously vain and stupid than another; for unless a man is engaged in satisfying his brute instincts, he can be twisted round the finger of ANY woman. But Mr. Krafft was the only one I've met, who didn't appear to me to have a single good impulse."

The big woman's high-pitched voice grated on Madeleine.

"You're quite wrong there," she said more snappily than before. "Heinz had as many good impulses as anyone else. But he had reduced the concealing of them to a fine art. He was never happier than when he had succeeded in giving a totally false impression of himself. Take me for this, for that!--just what I choose. Often it was as if he flung a bone to a dog: there! that's good enough for you. No one knew Heinz: each of us knew a little bit of him, and thought it was all there was to know.--He never showed a good impulse: that is as much as saying that he swarmed with them. And no doubt he would have considered that, with regard to you, he had been entirely successful. You have the idea of him he meant you to have."

"He was never her lover," said Louise with a studied carelessness.

Maurice, to whom nothing was more offensive than the tone of bravado in which she flaunted subjects of this nature, was stung to retaliation.

"How do YOU know?"

"Well, if you wish to hear--from his own lips."

"Do you mean to say you've spoken to Heinz about things of that kind?--discussed his relations with other women?"

"Do you need reminding that I knew Heinz before I had ever heard of you?"

He turned away, too dispirited to cross words with her. The events of the past week had closed over his head as two waves Close over a swimmer, cutting off light and air. Since the night on which he had left his whilom friend the mark of his spread fingers as a parting gift, he had ceased to care greatly about anything.

Compared with his pessimistic absorption in himself, Avery's suicide and Krafft's departure touched him lightly. For the girl, he had never cared. As soon, though, as he heard that Krafft had disappeared, he turned out his pockets for the scrap of paper Heinz had given him that evening in the cafe. But it threw no light on what had happened. It was merely an address, and, twist it as he would, Maurice could make no more of it than the words: KLOSTERGASSE 12. He resolved to go through the street of that name in the afternoon; but, when the time came, he forgot about it, and it was not till next morning that he carried out his intention. There was, however, nothing to be learned; number twelve was a gunsmith's shop, and at his hesitating inquiry, if anything were known there of a music-student called Krafft, the owner of the shop looked at him as if he were a lunatic, and answered rudely: was the Herr under the impression that the shop was an information BUREAU?

Louise was dressed to go out. Pressed as to her destination, she said that she was going to see the body. Maurice sought in vain to dissuade her.

"It's a perverse thing to do," he cried. "You didn't care a fig for the girl when she was alive. But now she can't forbid it, you go and stare at her, out of nothing but curiosity."

"How do you know whether I cared for her or not?" Louise threw at him: she was tying on her' veil before the glass. "Do you think I tell you everything?--And as for your 'perverse,' it's the same with all I ever do. You have made it your business always to find my wishes absurd." She took up her gloves and, holding them together, hit her muff with them. "In this case, it doesn't concern you in the least. I don't ask you to come. I want to go alone."

The more shattered and unsure he grew, the more self-assertive was she. There was an air of bravado in all she did, at this time--as in the matter of her determination to go to the dead-house--and she hurt him, with reckless cruelty, whenever a chance offered. Her pale mouth seemed only to open to say unkind things, and her eyes weighed him with an ironic contempt. To his jarred ears, her very laugh sounded less fine. At moments, she began almost to look ugly to him; but it was a dangerous ugliness, more seductive than her beauty had ever been. Then, he knew that she was not too good for him, nor he for her, nor either of them for the world they lived in.

They walked side by side to the mortuary. It was a very cold day, and Louise wore heavy furs, from which her face rose enticingly. The attention she attracted was to Maurice like gall to a wound.

There was not much difficulty in gaining admittance to the dead. A small coin changed hands, and a man in uniform opened the door.

The post-mortem examination had been held that day, and the body was swathed from head to foot in a white sheet. It lay on a long, projecting shelf, and a ticket was pinned on the wall at its head. On the opposite side of the room, on a similar shelf, was another shrouded figure--the body of a workingman, found that morning on the outskirts of the town, with an empty bottle which had contained carbolic acid by its side. The LEICHENFRAU, the public layer--out of the dead, told them this; it was she, too, who drew back the sheet from Avery's face in order that they might see it. She was a rosy, apple-cheeked woman, and her vivid colouring was thrown into relief by the long black cloak and the close-fitting, black poke-bonnet that she wore. Maurice, for whom the dead as such had no attraction, turned from his contemplation of the stark-stretched figure on the shelf, to watch the living woman. The exuberance of her vitality had something almost insultant in the presence of these two rigid forms, from whose faces the colour had fled for ever. Her eyes were alert like those of a bird; her voice and movements were loud and bustling. In thought he compared her to a carrion-crow. It was this woman's calling to live on the dead; she hastened from house to house to cleanse poor, inanimate bodies, whose dignity had departed from them. He wondered idly whether she gloated over the announcements of fresh deaths, and mentally sped the dying. Did she talk of good seasons and of slack seasons, and look forward to the spread of contagious disease?--Well, at least, she throve on her trade, as a butcher thrives by continually handling meat.

Louise had eyes only for the face of the dead girl. She stood gazing at it, with a curious absorption, but without a spark of feeling. The LEICHENFRAU, having finished tying up a basket, crossed the room and joined her.

"EINE SCHONE LEICHE!" she said, and nodded, appreciating the fact that a stranger should admire what was partly her own handiwork.

It was true; Avery's face looked as though it were modelled in wax. She had not been in the water for more than half an hour, had said the doctor, not long enough to be disfigured in any way. Only her hair remained dank and matted, and, although it was laid straight out over the bolster, it would probably never be quite dry again. No matter, continued the woman; on the morrow would come the barber, a good friend of hers, to dress it for the tomb; he would bring tongs and irons, and other heating-apparatus with him, and, for certain, would make a good job of it, so skilled was he: he had all the latest fashions in hair-dressing at his finger-ends. The face itself was as placid as it had been in life; the lids were firmly closed--no peeping or squinting here--and the lips met and rested on each other round and full. Seen like this, it now became evident that his face was one of those which are, all along, intended for death--intended, that is, to lie waxen and immobile, to show to best advantage. In life, there had been too marked a discrepancy between the extreme warmth of the girl's colouring and the extreme immobility of her expression. Now that the blood had, as it were, been drained away to the last drop, now that temples and nostrils had attained transparency, the fine texture of the skin and the beauty of the curves of lips and chin were visible to every eye. Only one hand, so the LEICHENFRAU babbled on, was convulsively closed, and could not be undone; and, as she spoke, she drew the sheet further down, and displayed the naked arm and hand: the long, fine fingers were clenched, the thumb inside the rest. Otherwise, Avery appeared to sleep, to sleep profoundly, with an intensity such as living sleep never attains to--the very epitome of repose. It seemed as if her eyelids were pressed down by some unseen force; and, in her presence, the feeling gained ground in one, that it was worth enduring much, to arrive at a rest of this kind at last.

"JA, JA," said the woman, and rearranged the covering. "It's a pleasure to handle such a pretty corpse. That one there, now,"--with her chin she pointed to the other figure, and made a face of disgust. "EIN EKLIGER KERL! There was nothing to be done with him."

"Let me see what he's like," begged Louise.

"It's an ugly sight," said the woman. However, she pulled the sheet down, and so far that not only the face, but also a part of the hairy black breast was visible.

Louise shuddered, yet the very horror of the thing fascinated her, and she plied the woman with questions about the workings of the agonising poison that had been swallowed. After one hasty glance, Maurice had turned away, and now stood staring out of the high, barred window into a gloomy little courtyard, For him, the air of the room was hard to breathe, owing to the faint, yet unmistakable odour, which even the waxen figure of the girl had begun to exhale; and he marvelled how Louise, who was so sensitive, could endure it.

Outside, both drew long breaths of the cold, evening air, and Louise bought a bunch of violets, which she pressed to nose and mouth.

"Horrible, horrible!" she said, at the same time raising her shoulders in their heavy cape. "Oh, that man!--I shall never forget his face."

"What do you go to such places for? You have only yourself to thank for it." He, too, was aware that a needless and repellent memory had been added to their lives.

"Oh, everything's my own fault--I know that. You are never to blame for anything!"

"Did I ask you to go there?--did I?"

But she only laughed in reply, through and through hostile to him; and they walked for some distance in silence.

"Why are you going this way?" he asked suspiciously, when she turned into a street that led in the opposite direction to that which they should have taken.

"I'm not going home. I couldn't sit alone in the dark with that ... that thing before my eyes."

"Who asked you to sit alone?--Where are you going?"

"I don't know ... where I like."

"That's no answer."

"And if I don't choose to answer?--I don't want you. I want to be alone. I'm sick of your perpetual bad-temper, and your eternal self-righteousness."

He laughed, just as she had done. The sound enraged her.

"Oh, the dead at least are at peace!" she cried.

"Yes! ... why don't you say it? You wish you were lying there--at peace from me!"

"Why should I say what you know so well?"

"Go and do it then!--who's hindering you?"

"For you?--kill myself for you?"

One word gave another; they pressed forward, in the falling dusk, like two distraught creatures, heedless of the notice they attracted, or of who should hear their bitter words. And because their gestures were, to some extent, regulated by the conventions of the street, because they could not face each other with flaming eyes, and throw out hands and arms to emphasise what they said, their words were all the more cruel. Louise made straight for home now; she escaped into the house, banging the door. Maurice strode down the street, in a tumult of resentment, vowing never to return.

Avery Hill was buried the following afternoon. Maurice went to the funeral, because, since he had seen the dead girl's body at the mortuary, he had been invaded by a kind of pity for her, lying alone at the mercy of barber and LEICHENFRAU. And so, towards three o'clock, he fought his way against a cutting wind to the JOHANNISFRIEDHOF.

A mere handful of people stood round the grave. In addition to the English chaplain, and a couple of diggers, there were present Dove, two Americans, and a young clerk from the consul's office, who was happy to be associated, in any fashion, with the English residents. It was the coldest day of that winter. Over the earth swept a harsh, dry wind, which cut like the blade of a knife, and forced stinging tears from the eyes. This wind had dried the frozen surface of the ground to the impenetrability of iron; loose earth crumbled before it like powder. Grass and shrubs had shrivelled, blighted by its breath; the bare trees were sooty-black against the sky. So intense was the prevailing sensation of icy dryness that it seemed as if the earth would never again know moisture. People's faces grew as wizened as the skins of old apples; throats and lungs were choked by the grey dust, which whirled through the streets, and made breathing an effort.

In the outlying cemetery it was still bleaker than in the shelter of the houses. Over this stretch of ground the wind swept as over the surface of a sea. The grave-diggers related the extraordinary difficulty they had had in digging the grave; the earth that had been thrown up lay cracked into huge, frozen lumps. These two men stood in the background while the service was going on, and stamped their feet and beat their hands, encased in monstrous woollen gloves, to keep the blood flowing. The English chaplain, a tall, cadaverous man, with sunken cheeks and a straw-coloured beard, had wound a red and white comforter over his surplice; the five young men pulled down the ear-flaps of their caps, and stood, with high-drawn shoulders, burrowing their hands in their pockets. The chaplain gabbled the few necessary prayers: they were inaudible to his hearers; for the rushing wind carried them straight over his shoulder into space. He was not more than a bare ten minutes over the service. Then the diggers came forward to lower the coffin. Owing to the stiffness of their hands, the ropes slid from their grasp, and the coffin fell forward into the hard yellow grave with a bump. The young men took the obligatory handfuls of earth, and struck the side of the coffin with them as gently as possible. With the last word still on his lips, the chaplain shut his book and fled; and the rest hastily dispersed. Maurice shook off the young clerk, who was murmuring unintelligible words of sympathy, and left the cemetery in the wake of the two Americans, for whom a droschke was in waiting to take them back to the town.

"Waal, I'm sort o' relieved that wasn't MY funeral," he heard one of them say.

He walked at full speed to restore his famished circulation. When he was in the heart of the town again, he entered a cafe; and there he remained, with his elbows on the little marble table, letting the scene he had just come through pass once more before his mind. There had been something grotesquely indecent about the haste of every one concerned: the chaplain, gabbling like a parrot, out of regard for the safety of his own lungs; the hurry-skurry of the diggers, whose thoughts were no doubt running on the size of their gratuities; the openly expressed satisfaction of the few mourners, when they were free to hurry off again, as in hurry they had arrived. Not one present but had counted the minutes, at the expiry of which the dead girl would be consigned to her appointed hole. What an ending! All the talent, the incipient genius, that had been in her, thrust away with the greatest possible despatch, buried out of sight in the hideously hard, cold earth. Snuffed out like a candle, and with as little ceremony, was all the warm, complex life that had made up this one, throbbing bit of humanity: for what it had been, not a soul alive now cared. And what a night, too, for one's first night underground! Brr!--At the thought of it, he drank another cup of coffee, and a fiery, stirring liqueur. But the sense of depression clung to him, and, as he walked home, he regretted the impulse that had led him to attend the funeral. For all the melancholy of valediction was his. The dead girl was free--and he had a sudden vision of her, as she had lain in the mortuary, with the look of superhuman peace on her face. Over the head of this, he was sarcastic at his own expense. For though she WERE being treated like a piece of lumber, what did it matter to her? Beneath the screening lid, she continued to sleep, tranquil, undisturbed. On the other hand, how absurd it was that he, who had cared little for her in life, should in this wise constitute himself her only mourner! And, mentally and physically, he now jerked himself to rights, and even began to whistle, as he went, in an attempt to seem at harmony with himself. But the tune that rose to his lips was Krafft's song, THE ROSE OF SHARON, and he straightway broke off, in disgust and confusion.

In his room, as soon as he had struck a match to light the lamp, he saw that a letter was lying on the table. By the gradual spread of the light, he made out that it bore an Austrian stamp, and directly he took it in his hand, he recognised the writing. Heinz!--it was from Heinz! He tore open the envelope with unsteady fingers; what could Heinz have to write to him about? Instinctively, he connected it in some way with the events of the afternoon. But it was a very brief note, covering hardly a page of the paper. Standing beside the lamp, Maurice held the sheet in the circle of light, and ran his eye over the few lines. He took them in, in a flash, that is to say, he read them automatically; but their sense did not penetrate his brain. He tried again, and still he could not grasp what they meant; still again, and slowly, word by word, till he could have repeated them by heart; but always without getting at their inner meaning. Then, however, and all of a sudden, as if some inner consciousness had understood them, and now gave bodily warning of it; suddenly, his knees began to shake, and he was forced to sit down. Sitting, he continued to stare at the page of writing before him, with contracted pupils. He commenced to read again, and even said the first line or two of the letter aloud, as if that might aid him. But the paper fell from his hand, and he gazed, instead, into the flame of the lamp, right into the inmost flame, till he was blind with it. His head fell forward, and lay on his hands, and on the rustling sheet of paper.

"God in Heaven!"

He heard himself say it, and was even conscious of the fact that, like every mortal in the throes of a strong emotion, he, too, called on God.

A long and profound silence ensued. It went on and on, persisted, was about to become eternal, when it was rudely broken by the sound of a child's cry. He raised his head. The walls swam round him: in spite of the coldness of the night and the fact that the room was unheated, he was clammy with perspiration. The skin of his face, too, had a peculiar, drawn feeling, as if it were a mask that was too tight for it. He shivered. Then his eye fell on the letter lying open on the table. Without a moment's hesitation, without waiting even to put the lamp out, he seized it, and went headlong from the house.

But he was strangely unequal to exertion. He felt a craving for stimulant, and entering a wine-shop, drank a couple of cognacs. His strength came back to him; people moved out of his way; he had energy enough to climb the stair, and to go through the business of unlocking the door.

At his abrupt entrance, Louise concealed something in a drawer, and turned the key on it. But Maurice was too self-absorbed to heed her action, or consciously to hear her exclamation at his haggard appearance. He shut the door, crossed to where she was standing, and, without speaking, pulled her nearer to the lamp. By its light, he scanned her face with a desperate eagerness.

"What is it? What's the matter?"

At the sound of her voice, the tension of the past hour relaxed. He let his head fall on her shoulder, and shut his eyes, swaying as she swayed beneath his weight.

"Forgive me! ... forgive me!"

"You've been drinking, I think." But she held still under his grasp.

"Yes, I have. Louise! ... tell me it's a horrible mistake. Help me, you MUST help me!"

"How can I help you, if you won't tell me what the matter is?" She believed him to be half drunk, and spoke as to a drunken person, without meaning much.

"Yes, yes ... I will. Only give me time."

But he postponed beginning. Leaning more heavily on her, he pressed his lips to the stuff of her dress. He would have liked to sleep, just where he was; indeed, he was invaded by the desire to sleep, never again to unclose his eyes. But she grew restless, and tried to draw her shoulder away. Then he looked at her, and a feverish stream of words, half self-recriminative, half in self-defence, burst from his lips. But they had little to do with the matter in hand, and were incomprehensible to her. "It has been a terrible nightmare. And only you can drive it away." As he spoke, he looked, with a sudden suspicion, right into her eyes. But they neither faltered nor grew uneasy.

"It will turn out to be nothing, I know," she said coldly. "You're always devising some new way of tormenting me."

Her words roused him. Fumbling in his pocket, he drew from it Krafft's letter. "Is that nothing? Read it and tell me. I found it at home on my table."

Louise took it with unmoved indifference. But directly she saw whose handwriting it was, her face grew grave and attentive. She looked back from the envelope to him, to see what he was thinking, to learn how much he knew. In spite of his roughness there was a hungry, imploring look in his eyes, an appeal to her to put him out of misery, and in the way he desired. And, as always, before such a look, her own face hardened.

"Read it! What he dares to write to me!"

Slowly, as if it were impossible for her to hurry, she drew the sheet from the crumpled envelope and smoothed it out. As she did so, she half turned away. But not so far that he could not see the dark, disfiguring blood stain her neck and blotch her cheek--even her ear grew crimson. She read deliberately, lingering over each word, but the instant she had finished, she crushed the paper to a ball, and threw it to the other end of the room.

"The scoundrel!" she cried. "Oh, the scoundrel!" Clenching her two hands, she pressed them to her face.

Maurice did not say a word; he hardly dared to draw breath, for fear some sign of her guilt might escape him. Leaning against the table, he marked each tell-tale quiver of lip or eyelid.

"The blackguard!" she cried again, shaken by rage. "If I had him here, I'd strangle him with my own hands!"

He gloated over her anger. "Yes," he said in a low voice. "I, too ... could kill him."

There was a pause, in which each followed out a possible means of revenge.

"Now you see," he said. "When I got home--when I found that--I thought I should go mad."

Reminded thus, of his share in the matter, Louise turned her head, and considered him. Her face was tense.

"Forgive me!" said Maurice, and held out his hands to her.

She gave him another look of the same kind. "I forgive YOU. What for?"

"Because ... since I got it, I've been thinking vile things."

"Oh, that!" She moved away, and gave a curt laugh, which met him like a stab. But she had no consideration for him: she had only room in her mind for Krafft's treachery. "I could kill him," she said again. "Don't.... Leave me alone!"--this to Maurice, who was trying to take her hand. "Don't touch me!"

"Not touch you!--why not?" In an instant his softness passed over into suspicion: it was like a dry pile that had waited for the match. "I not touch you?" he repeated. "Do you want to make me believe that what he says there is true?"

"Believe what you like."

"But that's just what I won't do. Turn here! Look me in the face! Now tell me it's a lie."

She struggled to free her hands. "You hurt me, Maurice! Let me go!"

"Be careful!--or I shall hurt you more than this. Now answer me!"

"You!--with your ridiculous heroics! Be careful yourself!"

His grip of her grew tighter.

"For your precious peace of mind then--that you may not be kept in suspense: what Heinz says there is--true!"

He did not at once grasp what she meant. He stood staring stupidly at her, still clutching her hands. With a determined effort, Louise wrenched them away.

"Don't you hear what I say? It's true--all true--every word of it!"

At the cruel repetition, he went pale, and after that, seemed to go on growing paler, until his face was like a sheet of paper. A horrible silence ensued; neither dared to let go of the other's eyes.

"My God!" he said at last. "My God!"

He sat down at the table, and buried his face in his arms. Louise did not move; she stood waiting, her hands, which were red and sore, pressed against her sides. And as minutes passed, and he did not stir, she began in a vacant way to count the ticks of the clock. If he did not speak soon, did not go on with what had to come, and get it over, she would be forced to scream. A scream was mounting in her throat.

"When was it? ... How? ... Why?"

She made no answer.

He straightened himself, holding on to the table. "And if that letter hadn't come, you wouldn't have told me?"

Again she did not reply. He sprang to his feet, interpreting her inability to bring forth a sound as mere contemptuous defiance.

"WHY did you tell me? Did I need to know?" he cried, loudly, and, in the confines of the room, his voice had the force of a shout. As she still remained dumb, he leaned across the table and actually shouted at her. "Any more?--are there any more? He won't have been the only one. Tell me, I say! Good God! Don't you hear me?" The arteries in his temples were beating like two separate hearts. As nothing he said would make her open her lips, he snatched up her hands again, and dragged her a few steps forward--this, to prove to himself that he had at least bodily power over her. "How dare you stand there and say it's true! You brazen, shameless----!"

She thought he was going to strike her, and moved her head quickly to one side. The movement did not escape him; he was amazed at it, and horrified by it. "You're afraid of me, are you? You expect to be beaten, when you make a confession of that sort?" And as she kept her head bent, in suspense, he shouted: "Very well, you shall have something to be afraid of ... you--!" and lifting his hand, he struck her a blow on the shoulder. It was given with force, and she sank to the floor, where she lay in a heap, screening her face with her arm. The first taste of his greater strength was like the flavour of blood to a beast of prey. In her mind, she might defy him, physically he was her master; and he struck her, again and again. But he did not wring any sound from her. She lay face downwards, and let the blows fall.

When his first onslaught of rage had spent itself, a glimmering of reason returned to him. He staggered to his feet, and looked down with horror at the prostrate figure. "My God, what am I doing?--what have I done?" A sudden fear swept through him that he had killed her.

But now, for the first time, she spoke. "It's true!" he heard her say.

At these words, the desire actually to kill her was so overwhelming that he moved precipitately away, and, in order not to see her, pressed his smarting hand to his eyes. But in the greater clearness of thought this shutting off of externals brought with it, the ultimate meaning of what she had done was revealed to him; he saw red through his closed lids, and, going back to her, he struck her anew. The knowledge that, under her dressing-gown, she had nothing on but a thin nightgown, gave him pleasure; he felt each of the blows fall full and hard on her firm flesh.

From time to time, she turned her face to cry: "It's true ... it is true!" deliberately inciting him to continue.

But the moment came when his arm sank powerless to his side, when, if his life had depended on it, he could not have struck another blow. With difficulty, he rose to his feet; and such was the apathy that came over him, that it was all he could do to drag himself to the sofa. Once there, he leaned back and closed his eyes.

For half an hour or more, neither of them stirred. Then, when she understood that he had done, that he was not coming back to her, Louise pulled herself into a sitting position, and from there to her feet. She could hardly stand; her head swam; not an inch of her body but ached and stung. Her exaltation had left her now; she began to feel sick, and, going over to the bed, she fell heavily upon it.

Maurice heard her movements; but so incapable did he feel of further effort that lie remained sitting, with his eyes shut. A new sound roused him: she was shivering, and with such violence that the bedstead was shaken. After a crucial struggle with himself, he rose, and crossed the room. She was lying outside the bedclothes. He pulled off an eider-down quilt, and spread it over her. As he did this, his arms were round her, all the beloved body was in his grasp. When he had finished, he did not remove them, but, kneeling down beside the bed, pressed his face to the quilt, and to the warm body below.

And so the night wore away.

XI.

Throughout February, and the greater part of March, the HAUPTPRUFUNGEN were held in the Conservatorium: twice a week, from six to eight o'clock in the evening, the concert hall was crammed with an eager crowd. To these concerts, the outside public was admitted, the critics were invited, and the performances received notices in the newspapers; in short, the outgoing student was, for the first time, treated like a real debutant. Concerted music was accompanied by the full orchestra; the large gallery that ran round the hall was opened up; and the girls, whose eager faces hung over its edge, were more brightly decked than usual, in ribbons and laces. Some of those who stepped down the platform seemed thoroughly to relish their first taste of publicity; others, on the contrary, were awkward and abashed, and did not venture to notice the encouragement that greeted their entrance. There were players as composed as the most hardened virtuosi; others, again, who were overcome by stage-fright to such an extent that they barely escaped a total fiasco.

The success of the year was Dove, in his performance of Chopin's Concerto in E minor. Dove's unshakable self-possession was here of immense value to him. Not a note was missed, not a turn slurred; the runs and brilliant passage-work of the concerto left his fingers like showers of pearls; his touch had the necessary delicacy, and, in addition to this, his reading was quite a revelation to his friends in the matter of TEMPERAMENT. It is true that Schwarz prohibited any undignified display of the emotional side of Chopin; the interpretation had to be on classical lines; but even the most determined opponents of Schwarz's method were forced to acknowledge that Dove made no mean show of the poetic contents of the music. The master himself, in his imperturbable way--he chose to act as if, all along, he had had this surprise for people up his sleeve--the master was in transports. His stern face wore an almost genial expression; he smiled, and talked loudly, and, when the performance was over, hurried to and fro, full of importance, shaking hands and accepting congratulations, with a fine shade of reserve. Dove's fellow-pupils were enraptured for Schwarz's sake; for, undeniably, the master's numbers this year were poor, compared with those of other teachers. It behoved the remainder to make the most of this isolated triumph; they did so, and were entertained by Schwarz at a special dinner, where many healths were drunk.

Those who had "made their PRUFUNG," as the phrase ran, were, as a rule, glad to leave Leipzig when the ordeal was behind them. But Dove, who, on the day following his performance, when his name was to be read in the newspapers accompanied by various epithets of praise, had proposed and been accepted, and was this time returning to England a solemnly engaged man--Dove waited a week for his fiancee and her family, who had not been prepared for so sudden a move. He was the man of the hour. As a response to the flattering notices, he had called on all his critics, and been received by several; and he could hardly walk a street-length, without running the gauntlet of some belated congratulation. Schwarz had spoken seriously to him about prosecuting his studies for a further year, with the not impossible prospect of a performance in the Gewandhaus at the end of it; but Dove had laid before his master the reasons why this could not be: he was no longer a free man; there were now other wishes to be consulted in addition to his own. Besides, if the truth must be told, Dove had higher aims, and these led him imperatively back to England.

Madeleine was ready to leave a couple of days after her last performance. Her plans for the future were fixed and sure. She had long ago given up making adventurous schemes for storming America: that had merely been her contribution to the romance of the place. Now she was hastening away to spend the month of March in Paris; she was not due at the school to which she was returning till the end of April; and, in Paris, she intended to take a brief course of finishing lessons, to rub off what she called "German thoroughness." She, too, had made a highly successful exit, though without creating a furore like Dove. Since all she did was well done, it was not possible for her to be a surprise to anyone.

And finally, the rush she had lived in for weeks past, was over, the last afternoon had come, and, in its course, she went to the railway station to make arrangements about her luggage. On her way home, she entered Klemm's music-shop, where she stood, for a considerable time, taking leave of one and another. When she emerged again, the town had assumed that spectral look, which, towards evening, made the quaint old gabled streets so attractive.

For the first time, Madeleine felt something akin to regret at having to leave. She had enjoyed, and made the most of, her years of study; but she was now quite ready to advance, curious to attack the future, and to dominate that also. Still, the dusk on the familiar streets inclined her to feel sentimental. "This time tomorrow, I'll be hundreds of miles away," she said to herself, "and probably shall never see the old place again." As she walked, she looked back upon her residence there--already somewhat in the light of a remembrance--weighing what it had been worth to her. Part of it was intimately associated with Maurice Guest, and thus she recalled him, too. Of late he had passed out of her life; she had been too busy to think of him. Now, however, that she was at the end of this period, the fancy seized her to see him again; and she took a resolution which had, perhaps, been dormant in her for some time.

"I don't see why I shouldn't," she reasoned. "No one will know. And even if they do, I'm leaving, and it won't matter."

And so she pulled her hat further over her face, and brisked up her steps in the direction of the BRAUSTRASSE--a street which she disliked, and never entered if she could avoid it. If he had lived in a better neighbourhood, things might have gone better with him, she mused; for Madeleine was a staunch believer in the influence of surroundings, and could not, for instance, understand a person who lived in dirt and disorder having any but a dirty or disorderly mind. She went from door to door, scanning the numbers, with her head poked a little forward and to one side, like a bird's. As she ascended the stair, she raised her skirts, and her nostrils twitched displeased.

Frau Krause held the door open by an inch, and looked at Madeleine with distrust.

"No, he's not," she replied. "And what's more, I couldn't say, if you were to pay me, when he will be."

But Madeleine was not to be daunted by the arrogance of any landlady alive. "Why? Is he so irregular?" she asked. She had placed her foot in the opening of the door, and now, by a skilful movement, inserted herself bodily into the passage.

Frau Krause, baffled, could do no more than mumble a: "Well, if you like to wait!" and point out the room. She followed Madeleine over the threshold, drying her hands on her apron.

"Are you a friend of his, may I ask?" she inquired.

"Why? What do you want to know for? Do you think I'd be here if I weren't?" said Madeleine, looking her up and down.

"Why I want to know?" repeated Frau Krause, and tossed her head. "Why, because I think if Herr Guest has any friends left, they ought to know how he's going on--that's why, Fraulein!"

"How going on?" queried Madeleine with undisturbed coolness, and looked round her for a chair.

Throwing a cautious glance over her shoulder, Frau Krause said behind her hand: "It's my opinion there's a woman in the case."

"You don't need to whisper; your opinion is an open secret," answered Madeleine drily. "There is a woman, and there she sits, as you no doubt very well know." As she spoke, she pointed to a photograph of Louise, which stood on the lid of the piano.

"I thought as much," exclaimed the landlady. "I thought as much. And a bad, bold face it is, too."

"Now explain, please, what you mean by his goings on. Is he in debt to you?" Madeleine continued her interrogatory.

"Well, I can't just say that," replied the woman, with what seemed a spice of regret. "He's paid up pretty regular till now--though of course one never knows how long he'll keep on doing it. But it goes against my heart to see a young man, who might be one's own son, acting as he does. When he first came here, there wasn't a decenter young man anywhere than Herr Guest--if I had a complaint, it was that he was too much of a steady-goer. I used to tell him he ought to take more heed for his health, not to mention the ears of the people that had to live with him. He sat at that piano there all the blessed day. And now there isn't a lazier, more cantankerous fellow in the place. You can't please him anyhow. He never gives you a civil word. He doesn't work, he doesn't cat, and he's getting so thin that his clothes just hang on him."

"Is he drinking?" interrupted Madeleine in the same matter-of-fact way, with her eye on the main points of probable offence.

"Well, I can't just say that," answered Frau Krause. "Not but what it mightn't be better if he was. It's the ones as don't drink who are the hard ones to get on with, in my experience. Young gentlemen who like their liquor, are of the goodnatured, easy-going sort. Now I once had a young fellow here----"

"But I don't see in the least what you've got to complain of!" said Madeleine. "He pays you for the room, and you no doubt have free use of it.--A very good bargain!"

She sat back and stared about her, while Frau Krause, recognising that she had met her match in this sharp-tongued young lady, curbed her temper, and launched out into the history of a former lodger.

It was a dingy room, long and narrow, with a single window. Against the door that led into an adjoining room, stood a high-backed, uninviting sofa, with a table in front of it. Between this and the window was the writing-bureau, a flat, man-high piece of furniture, with drawers and pigeon-holes, and a broad flap that let down for writing purposes. Against the opposite wall stood the neglected piano, and, towards the door, on both sides, were huddled bed, washstand, and the iron stove. Everything was of an extreme shabbiness: the stuffing was showing through holes in the sofa, the strips of carpet were worn threadbare. A couple of photographs and a few books were ranged in line on the bureau--that was all that had been done towards giving the place a homely air. It was like a room that had never properly been lived in.

While Madeleine sat thinking this, the sound of a key was heard in the front door, and Frau. Krause, interrupted in her story, had just time to tap Madeleine on the arm, exclaim: "Here he is!" and dart out of the room. Not so promptly, however, but what Maurice saw where she came from. Madeleine heard them bandying words in the passage.

The door of the room was flung open, and Maurice, entering hotly, threw his hat on the table. He did not perceive his visitor till it was too late.

"Madeleine! You here!" he exclaimed in surprise and embarrassment. "I beg your pardon. I didn't see you," and he made haste to recover his hat.

"Yes, don't faint, it's I, Maurice.--But what's the matter? Why are you so angry with the person? Does she pry on you?"

"Pry!" he echoed, and his colour deepened. "Pry's not the word for it. She ransacks everything I have. I never come home but what I find she has overhauled something, though I've forbidden her to enter the room."

"Why don't you--or rather, why didn't you move? It's not much of a place, I'm sure."

"Move?" he repeated, in the same tone as before, and, as he spoke, he looked incredulously at Madeleine. He had hung his coat and hat on a peg, and now came forward to the table. "Move?" he said once again, and prolonged the word as though the channel of thought it opened up was new to him.

"Good gracious, yes!--If one's not satisfied with one's rooms, one moves, that's all. There's nothing strange about it."

He murmured that the idea had never occurred to him, and was about to draw up a chair, when his eye caught a letter that was lying on the lowered flap of the bureau. In patent agitation, and without excusing himself, he seized it and tore it open. Madeleine saw his face darken. He read the letter through twice, from beginning to end, then tore it into a dozen pieces and scattered them on the shelf.

"No bad news, I hope?"

He turned his face to her; it was still contracted. "That depends on how you look at it, Madeleine," he said, and laughed in an unpleasant manner.

After this, he seemed to forget her again; he stood staring at the scraps of paper with a frown. For some minutes, she waited. Then she saw herself forced to recall him to the fact of her presence.

"Could you spare me a little attention now?" she asked. At her words, he jumped, and, with evident confusion, brought his wandering thoughts home. "I can't sit here for ever you know," she added.

"I beg your pardon." He came up to the table, and took the chair he had previously had his hand on. "The fact is I--Can I do anything for you, Madeleine?"

"For me? Oh, dear, no!--You are surprised to find me here, no doubt! But as I'm leaving to-morrow morning, I thought I'd run up and say good-bye to you--that's all. A case of Mohammed and the mountain, you see."

"Leaving? To-morrow?"

"Yes.--Goodness, there's nothing wonderful in that, is there? Most people do leave some time or other, you know." His reply was inaudible. "It was very good of you to look me up," he threw in as an afterthought.

Madeleine, watching him, with a thin, sarcastic smile on her lips, had chanced to let her eyes stray to his hands, which he had laid on the table, and she continued to fix them, fascinated in spite of herself by the uncared-for condition of the nails. These were bitten, and broken, and dirty. Maurice, becoming aware of her intent gaze, looked down to see what it was at, hastily withdrew his hands and hid them in his pockets.

"This is the first time I've been in your den, you know," she said abruptly. "Really, Maurice, you might have done better. I don't know how you've managed to put up with it so long."

"My dear Madeleine, do you think I could afford to live in a palace?"

"A palace?--absurd! You probably pay sixteen or seventeen marks for this hole. Well, I could have found you any number of better places for the same money--if you had come to me."

"You're very kind. But it has done me well enough."

"So it appears."

Sitting back, she looked round her, in the hope of picking up some neutral subject. "Are those your people?" she asked, and nodded at the photograph of a family-group, which stood on the top shelf of the bureau. "Three boys, are you not? You are like your mother," and she stared, with unfeigned curiosity, at the provincial figures, dressed out in their best coats and silks, and in heavy gold jewellery.

"Good God, Madeleine!" Maurice burst out at this, his loosely kept patience escaping him. "You didn't come here, I suppose, to remark on my family?"

"Well, I can't congratulate you on an improvement in your manners, since I saw you last."

"I am not aware of having changed."

"As well for you, perhaps. However, I'll tell you about myself, if it interests you." She turned her cool, judicial gaze on him again; and now she set before him her projects for the future. But though he kept his eyes fastened on her face, she saw that he was not listening to what she said, or, at most, that he only half heard it; for, when she ceased to speak, he did not notice her silence.

She waited, curious to see what would come next, and presently he echoed, in his vague way: "Paris, did you say?--Really?"

"Yes--Paris: the capital of France.--I said that, and a good deal more, which I don't think you heard.--And now I won't take up your precious time any longer.--You've nothing new to tell me, I suppose? You still intend staying on here, and fighting out the problem of existence? Well, when you have starved satisfactorily in a garret, I hope some one will let me know. I'll come over for the funeral."

She rose, and began to button her jacket.

"And England has absolutely no chance? English music must continue to languish, without hope of reform?"

"How can you remember such rot! I was a terrible fool when I talked like that."

"I liked you better as a fool than I do now, with your acquired wisdom. And I won't go from here without offering you congratulations, hearty congratulations, on the muddle you've made of things."

"That's entirely my own affair."

"You may be thankful it is! Do you think anyone else would want the responsibility of it?"

She went out without a further word. But on the landing at the bottom of the first flight of stairs, she stood irresolute. She felt annoyed with herself that she had allowed an unfriendly tone to dominate their brief interview. This was probably the last time she would see him; the last chance she would have of telling him just what she thought of him. And viewed in that light, it seemed ridiculous to let any artificial delicacy of feeling stand in her way. She blew her nose vigorously, and, not being used to indecision, turned as she did so, and began to ascend the stairs again. Brushing past Frau Krause, she reopened, without knocking, the door of Maurice's room.

He had moved the lamp from the table to the bureau, and at her entrance was bending over something that lay there, so engrossed that he did not at once raise his head.

"Good gracious! What are you doing?" escaped her involuntarily.

At this, he spun round, and, leaning back against the writingtable, tried to screen it from her eyes.

She regretted her impulsive curiosity, and did not press him. "Yes, it's me again," she said with determination. "And I suppose you'll want to accuse me of prying, too, like that female outside.--Look here: it's ludicrous for us who have been friends so long to part in this fashion. And I, for one, don't intend to do it. There's something I want to say before I go--you may be angry and offended if you like; I don't care"--for he frowned forbiddingly. "I'm no denser than other people; and I know just as well as every one else the wretched mess you've got yourself into--one would have to be blind and deaf, indeed, not to know.--Now, look here, Maurice! You once said to me, you may remember, that if you had a sister you'd like her to be something like me. Will you look on me as that sister for a little, and let me give you some sound advice? I told you I was going to Paris, and that I had a clear month there. Well, now, throw your things together and come with me. You haven't had a decent holiday since you've been here. You need freshening up.--Or if not Paris--Paris isn't a necessity--we'll go down by Munich and the Brenner to Italy, and I'll be cicerone. I'll act as banker, too, and you can regard it as a loan in the meantime, and pay me back when you're richer.--Now what do you say? Doesn't the plan tempt you?"