For several days she had not touched the violin.  There was no time for it.  Correspondence, engagements, intrigues, whirled her through the waking hours and agitated her repose.  The newspaper paragraphs resulted in a shower of letters, inquiring, congratulating, offering good wishes, and all had to be courteously answered, lest the writers should take offence.  Invitations to luncheon, to dinner, to midnight ‘at homes’, came thick and fast.  If all this resulted from a few preliminary ‘puffs’ what, Alma asked herself, would be the consequence of an actual success?  How did the really popular musicians contrive to get an hour a day for the serious study of their art?  Her severe headache had left behind it some nervous disorder, not to be shaken off by any effort —­ a new distress, peculiarly irritating to one who had always enjoyed good health.  When she wrote, her hand was unsteady, and sometimes her eyes dazzled.  This would be alarming if it went on much longer; the day approached, the great day, the day of fate, and what hope was there for a violinist who could not steady her hand?

The ‘interviewer’ called, and chatted for half an hour, and took his leave with a flourish of compliments.  The musicians engaged to play with her at Prince’s Hall’s came down to try over pieces, a trio, a duet; so that at last she was obliged to take up her instrument —­ with results that did not reassure her.  She explained that she was not feeling quite herself; it was nothing; it would pass in a day or two.  Sibyl Carnaby had asked her and Harvey to dine next week, to meet several people; Mrs Rayner Mann had arranged a dinner for another evening; and now Mrs Strangeways, whom she had not seen for some weeks, sent an urgent request that she would call in Porchester Terrace as soon as possible, to speak of something ‘very important’.

This summons Alma durst not disregard.  Between Mrs. Strangeways and Cyrus Redgrave subsisted an intimacy which caused her frequent uneasiness.  It would not have surprised her to discover that this officious friend knew of all her recent meetings with Redgrave —­ at the Crystal Palace and elsewhere; and, but for her innocence, she would have felt herself at the woman’s mercy.  That she had not transgressed, and was in no danger of transgressing, enabled her to move with head erect among the things unspeakable which always seemed to her to be lurking in the shadowed corners of Mrs. Strangeways’ house.  The day was coming when she might hope to terminate so undesirable an acquaintance, but for the present she must show a friendly face.

She made this call at three o’clock, and was received in that over-scented, over-heated boudoir, which by its atmosphere invariably turned her thoughts to evil.  The hostess rose languidly, with a pallid, hollow-eyed look of illness.

‘Only my neuralgic something or other,’ she said, in reply to a sympathetic inquiry.  ’It’s the price one pays for civilisation.  I’ve had two terrible days and nights, but it’s over for the present.  But for that I should have written to you before.  Why, you don’t look quite so well as usual.  Be careful —­ do be careful!’