"Have the kindness to introduce me, Sonitschka," asks he. His voice trembles a little.

"My cousin, Nikolai Lensky," says Sophie, in a tone which betrays that this cousin is not merely a cousin for her.

"Fraulein von Sankjewitch," she adds, explanatorily. "But what is the matter, my heart, you look so faint?" This turning to Nita.

"It is nothing; it will pa.s.s off," murmurs Nita, and sits down.

Nikolai's features take on a truly anxious expression, and he cannot take his eyes from off her. Why does she, just she, please him, before she has exchanged a word with him, better than formerly any woman has pleased him? She looks unusually attractive to-day, besides. The weary fever which quite weighs her down to the ground takes from her appearance the harshness which often makes her somewhat cold. The outline of her face is much softer than formerly. A mysterious light shines from her large eyes, the eyes in which a strange grief lies buried, and round her mouth trembles an expression as of death-sentenced tenderness which will not die.

"Could you possibly get me a vinaigrette, Colia?" asks Sonia, anxiously.

A mad storm of applause cuts short her words. Through the pa.s.sage left between the audience on the stage strides a large man, with long, half-curled hair, which begins to grow gray; with a face whose features remind one of an Egyptian Sphinx, a face with an indescribable expression of gloomy sadness, austere pride, and touching kindness; a face that is not handsome, but which one never forgets when one has once seen it, the face of a man who has tasted all the pleasures of earth and who is yet always hungry--the face of a man who still desperately longs for something in which he has long ceased to believe.

The two cooperators are behind him--the 'cellist, a Parisian celebrity with curly hair parted in the middle, and a very long mustache, which he had inherited from an exiled Polish martyr; the pianist, a pupil of De Sterny, like him in appearance, blond, slender, medium sized, faultlessly attired, almost dandified.

Lensky bows simply, benevolently, in all directions; the Schumann trio commences.

Dominating the two other instruments, the silvery sweet tones of the violin vibrate through the hall.

Nita bends her head forward--listens--listens. Young Lensky has brought her the vinaigrette which Sophie had asked for. She turns it absent-mindedly in her hands. Her eyes become gloomier.

Why had she come here, why?--to oblige Sophie? No: because, again and again, the whole night long, she had ever heard these silvery violin tones, in a thousand caressing shadings, oppressive, sad, alluring. She had promised herself the highest musical enjoyment which can be offered to one, and feels a fearful disappointment.

Already after the first bars Lensky begins to hurry. He is vexed at the cold playing of the Parisian 'cellist, at a gnat which has flown against his face, at G.o.d knows what.

From that moment his playing differs from other violin virtuosos only through a raging acceleration of _tempo_, an astonishing lack of purity, and a luxuriant fulness of sound, an inimitable softness and satiety of tone which none of the other violinists have ever attained.

His playing is of an arbitrariness which completely confuses the 'cellist, ignorant of his peculiarities. At many parts the three instruments are not together.

It is pitiable music. The veins in Lensky's forehead swell with rage.

Ever more fiercely he draws the bow across his violin; it is now for him merely an instrument on which he can vent his bad moods.

A critic who is present describes his playing as a musical crime, the performance of the trio as a sin against Schumann's creation. Still, at the close of the number, abundant applause falls to the share of the artists. It is the fashion to rave over the "devil's violinist." What in any case seems strange in the performance to the Parisians, they describe as "Slavonic," and with this short word lull all such thoughts.

"It is one of his bad days," sighs Sophie, "or it is no longer the same man."

For the first time Nita's eyes rest on the virtuoso, who now, recalled by the audience with loud cries of applause, again steps on the stage between the two other performers.

He stoops, his lower lip is flabby, deep furrows are in his cheeks, there are heavy shadows under his eyes, the chin has no longer the firm, marked outline of formerly, and still-- "He is quite the same,"

says Nita, shortly, and turns away her head.

Naturally he is the same, only the dross in his nature comes to light more hatefully and intrusively than formerly, when the whole charm of fiery manhood glorified his faults. These faults become a young man, but an old man they do not.

At last the audience has become quiet; the concert proceeds.

Monsieur Albert Perfection sits down to the piano, plays a nocturne of Chopin, an _etude_ of Thalberg, and a Liszt tarentella with blameless technical perfection, and without faltering a single time.

After the impure, confused, over-hasty, and still, in spite of everything, fascinating playing of Lensky, his performance has a calm, soothing effect on the nerves, and without reckoning to what phenomenon to ascribe the effect, the public breathes freely, breaks out in stormy bravos, then suddenly recollects itself--considers. To distinguish his accompanist at one of Boris Lensky's concerts! It is not fitting.

Then follows quite a long pause, and at length Lensky once more steps upon the stage.

In two minutes scarcely one of those present remembers that Albert Perfection exists. Whatever musical adherents Lensky had lost, he has quite won back.

Even now his playing is not perfectly free from continual little technical faults and impurities, but still, who would have time to stop at those while this sense-enthralling, oppressing, resonant charm flows from his violin? It is now no longer a violin; it is a human heart which spreads out all its treasures before the crowd, exposes its holiest of holies to it, and in a wonderful, mysterious language, a language which all understand, and to which no one can lend words, confesses his joys and sorrows, his heaven-aspiring enthusiasm, and, swooning, back to earth sinking, human sadness.

His appearance also has changed, become enn.o.bled. His formerly flushed face is now deathly pale; the deeply sunken eyes are almost closed; the hateful expression about his mouth has disappeared, and has given place to an inconsolably melancholy expression; his lips are half parted; he breathes with difficulty, sometimes something like a gasp interrupts his performance. The insane story from _Figaro_ comes to the mind of more than one of his listeners. It is not to be denied, his playing gives the impression of a bad charm to which he himself has fallen victim.

Now Lensky plays his own composition, his famous, wonderful "La Legende," for which every one in the audience waited eagerly. In the middle of the powerful, striking melody of the piece something like a sob and the wearily fluttering wings of an angel who has wandered into Hades, and now vainly seeks the way to its home, sounds from beneath his bow.

The audience is beside itself. Men laugh, weep, rejoice, clap their hands, stamp their feet, mount on chairs in order to see him better.

"_Bis, bis, bis!_" sounds from all sides. He repeats it.

Then a murmur goes through the room: some one has fainted yonder on the stage--Nita! Her head falls forward. With difficulty Sophie holds her for one moment upright in her arms; then Nikolai springs to her help, carries out the unconscious woman. Sonia follows him.

An unpleasant excitement overpowers the audience; without entirely stopping, Lensky r.e.t.a.r.ds his strokes, coughs compa.s.sionately, looks short-sightedly squinting after his son. A splendid fellow! How easily he carries the dark form! Who was she? A slender, supple young body, evidently. Then he takes up the rhythm anew--the incident is forgotten.

IV.

Now the concert is over. After much that was beautiful and n.o.ble, in conclusion Lensky, in a superior, quite negligent manner, threw to the public a bravura piece by some unknown Russian composer, a wild, triumphal fanfare of neck-breaking double notes.

They hurrah, clap, are mad with enthusiasm, call him back again and again, but Lensky shows himself no more. He and his son roll along in a cab to the Hotel Westminster, where the great violinist, according to old custom, has his quarters.

The fever of his musical excitement still throbs in Lensky's every vein. His nerves are still quivering from the fierce, jubilant storm of applause. Something like an echo of the hand-clapping, which sounds quite like a hail-storm, yet rings in his ears.

Nikolai has no noise of applause in his ears, therefore he hears again and again the first sweet, dreamy bars of the "Legende." They form in his soul the musical background for a pale little face with large, gloomy eyes and melancholy, lovely mouth. How she had listened to his father's playing, quite with a kind of horror in her solemn gaze! He had never seen any one listen so. At every tone the expression of her face had changed. Were there, then, really people upon whom music could have such an effect?

And then how she had suddenly sunk down! Ah! how charming it was to take the slender, supple body in his arms, which scarcely felt the weight. Her head had rested so heavily and wearily on his shoulder; her hair, the silky, soft, golden-brown hair, had touched his cheek. He could not forget it; it seemed to him that he still held her; he felt the unconscious leaning of the warm young body against his breast. And this little face! How much more beautiful it had become when the forced self-restraint had left it. The cold, gloomy expression had vanished; it looked deathly sad, the poor, pale little face. But what an indescribable tenderness and goodness mingled with the sadness!

What might the great pain which lay hidden in her young heart be? Ah, to be able to console her! A foolish wish! Where were his thoughts wandering?

"Have you a match, Colia?" asks a rough voice near him.

Nikolai starts. He seems to himself impolite in his silence to his father. He should have said a few words to him upon his success.

"To-day was an inspiration, father," he remarks, while he hands the virtuoso his match-box.

"There was a great noise, at any rate," says Lensky, and shrugs his shoulders. "That does not mean much. I beg you! A success is always like an epidemic or a conflagration. No one really knows why. Sometimes one achieves it, and not at other times. Apropos, some one fainted to-day. Who was it? An old woman, was it not?"

"No; a young girl."

"Was she pretty?"

"She pleased me."

"H-m! h-m! And she fainted because she was too tightly laced?"