it seriously, even considering that it conferred upon them some social distinction.  There were pretty women in paint and spangles, with conscious, half-grown boys just up from Oxford; company-promoters dining and wining possible subscribers or “guinea-pigs” into an acquiescent state; Guardsmen giving a dinner of farewell to brother-officers departing for the Soudan or the Cape; wide-eyed Americans just off the steamer in high dresses, great ladies in low dresses and lofty tiaras, and ladies of the stage, utterly unconscious of the boon they were conferring on the people about them, who, an hour before, had paid ten shillings to look at them from the stalls.

Edouard, as he sat with his violin on his knee, his fingers fretting the silent strings, observed them all without envy and without interest.  Had he been able to choose, it would not have been to such a well-dressed mob as this that he would have given his music.  For at times a burst of laughter killed a phrase that was sacred to him, and sometimes the murmur of the voices and the clatter of the waiters would drown him out altogether.  But the artist in him forced him to play all things well, and for his own comfort he would assure himself that no doubt somewhere in the room someone was listening, someone who thought more of the strange, elusive melodies of the Hungarian folksongs than of the chefs entrees, and that for this unknown one he must be true to himself and true to his work.  Covertly, he would seek out some face to which he could make the violin speak—­not openly and impertinently, as did Bardini, but secretly and for sympathy, so that only one could understand.  It pleased young Edouard to see such a one raise her head as though she had heard her name spoken, and hold it poised to listen, and turn slowly in her chair, so completely engaged that she forgot the man at her elbow, and the food before her was taken away untouched.  It delighted him to think that she knew that the music was speaking to her alone.  But he would not have had her think that the musician spoke, too—­it was the soul of the music, not his soul, that was reaching out to the pretty stranger.  When his soul spoke through the music it would not be, so he assured himself, to such chatterers as gathered on the terrace of the Savoy Restaurant.

Mrs. Warriner and her daughter were on their way home, or to one of their homes; this one was up the Hills of Lenox.  They had been in Egypt and up the Nile, and for the last two months had been slowly working their way north through Greece and Italy.  They were in London, at the Savoy, waiting for their sailing-day, and on the night of their arrival young Corbin was giving them a dinner.  For three months Mrs. Warriner and himself had alternated in giving each other dinners in every part of Southern Europe, and the gloom which hung over this one was not due to the fact that the diners had become wearied of one another’s society, but that the opportunities still left to them for