Somewhat calmed by his suppression, Paul dashed out to the front of the house to seat the early comers.  He was a model usher.  Gracious and smiling he ran up and down the aisles.  Nothing was too much trouble for him; he carried messages and brought programs as though it were his greatest pleasure in life, and all the people in his section thought him a charming boy, feeling that he remembered and admired them.  As the house filled, he grew more and more vivacious and animated, and the colour came to his cheeks and lips.  It was very much as though this were a great reception and Paul were the host.  Just as the musicians came out to take their places, his English teacher arrived with checks for the seats which a prominent manufacturer had taken for the season.  She betrayed some embarrassment when she handed Paul the tickets, and a hauteur which subsequently made her feel very foolish.  Paul was startled for a moment, and had the feeling of wanting to put her out; what business had she here among all these fine people and gay colours?  He looked her over and decided that she was not appropriately dressed and must be a fool to sit downstairs in such togs.  The tickets had probably been sent her out of kindness, he reflected, as he put down a seat for her, and she had about as much right to sit there as he had.

When the symphony began Paul sank into one of the rear seats with a long sigh of relief, and lost himself as he had done before the Rico.  It was not that symphonies, as such, meant anything in particular to Paul, but the first sigh of the instruments seemed to free some hilarious spirit within him; something that struggled there like the Genius in the bottle found by the Arab fisherman.  He felt a sudden zest of life; the lights danced before his eyes and the concert hall blazed into unimaginable splendour.  When the soprano soloist came on, Paul forgot even the nastiness of his teacher’s being there, and gave himself up to the peculiar intoxication such personages always had for him.  The soloist chanced to be a German woman, by no means in her first youth, and the mother of many children; but she wore a satin gown and a tiara, and she had that indefinable air of achievement, that world-shine upon her, which always blinded Paul to any possible defects.

After a concert was over, Paul was often irritable and wretched until he got to sleep,—­and tonight he was even more than usually restless.  He had the feeling of not being able to let down; of its being impossible to give up this delicious excitement which was the only thing that could be called living at all.  During the last number he withdrew and, after hastily changing his clothes in the dressing-room, slipped out to the side door where the singer’s carriage stood.  Here he began pacing rapidly up and down the walk, waiting to see her come out.

Over yonder the Schenley, in its vacant stretch, loomed big and square through the fine rain, the windows of its twelve stories glowing like those of a lighted card-board house under a Christmas tree.  All the actors and singers of any importance stayed there when they were in the city, and a number of the big manufacturers of the place lived there in the winter.  Paul had often hung about the hotel, watching the people go in and out, longing to enter and leave school-masters and dull care behind him for ever.