"My criticism could not be technical," said the other, smiling, again, "for I am not a pianist."

"You play some other instrument?" asked Helen; afterwards she added, mischievously, "or are you just a critic?"

"I play the violin," the man answered.

"You are going to play for us this evening?"

"No," said the other, "I fear I shall not."

"Why not?" Helen inquired.

"I have not been feeling very well to-day," was the response. "But I have promised your aunt to play some evening; we had quite a long dispute."

"You do not like to play in public?" asked Helen.

The question was a perfectly natural one, but it happened unfortunately that as the girl asked it her glance rested upon the figure of her companion. The man chanced to look at her at the same instant, and she saw in a flash that her thought had been misread.

Helen colored with the most painful mortification; but Mr. Howard gave, to her surprise, no sign of offense.

"No, not in general," he said, with simple dignity. "I believe that I am much better equipped as a listener."

Helen had never seen more perfect self-possession than that, and she felt quite humbled.

It would have been difficult to guess the age of the man beside her, but Helen noticed that his hair was slightly gray. A closer view had only served to strengthen her first impression of him, that he was all head, and she found herself thinking that if that had been all of him he might have been handsome, tho in a strange, uncomfortable way. The broad forehead seemed more prominent than ever, and the dark eyes seemed fairly to shine from beneath it. The rest of the face, tho wan, was as powerful and ma.s.sive as the brow, and seemed to Helen, little used as she was to think of such things, to indicate character as well as suffering.

"It looks a little like Arthur's," she thought.

This she had been noticing in the course of the conversation; then, because her curiosity had really been piqued, she brought back the original topic again. "You have not told me about my playing," she smiled, "and I wish for your opinion. I am very vain, you know."

(There is wisdom in avowing a weakness which you wish others to think you do not possess.)

"It gave me great pleasure to watch you," said the man, after a moment.

"To watch me!" thought Helen. "That is a palpable evasion. That is not criticising my music itself," she said aloud, not showing that she was a trifle annoyed.

"You have evidently been very well taught," said the other,--"unusually well; and you have a very considerable technic."

And Helen was only more uncomfortable than ever; evidently the man would have liked to add a "but" to that sentence, and the girl felt as if she had come near an icicle in the course of her evening's triumph. However, she was now still more curious to hear the rest of his opinion. Half convinced yet that it must be favorable in the end, she said:

"I should not in the least mind your speaking plainly; the admiration of people who do not understand music I really do not care for." And then as Mr. Howard fixed his deep, clear eyes upon her, Helen involuntarily lowered hers a little.

"If you really want my opinion," said the other, "you shall have it.

But you must remember that it is yourself who leads me to the bad taste of being serious in company."

That last remark was in Helen's own style, and she looked interested. For the rest, she felt that she had gotten into grave trouble by her question; but it was too late to retreat now.

"I will excuse you," she said. "I wish to know."

"Very well, then," said Mr. Howard; "the truth is that I did not care for your selection."

Helen gave a slight start. "If that is all the trouble, I need not worry," she thought; and she added easily, "The sonata is usually considered one of Beethoven's very greatest works, Mr. Howard."

"I am aware of that," said the other; "but do you know how Beethoven came to compose it?"

Helen had the happy feeling of a person of moderate resources when the conversation turns to one of his specialties. "Yes," she said; "I have read how he said 'So pocht das Schicksal auf die Pforte.'

[Footnote: "So knocks Fate upon the door."] Do you understand that, Mr. Howard?"

"Only partly," said the other, very gently; "do you?" And Helen felt just then that she had made a very awkward blunder indeed.

"Fate is a very dreadful thing to understand, Miss Davis," the other continued, slowly. "When one has heard the knock, he does not forget it, and even the echo of it makes him tremble."

"I suppose then," said Helen, glibly, trying to save herself, "that you think the sonata is too serious to be played in public?"

"Not exactly," was the answer; "it depends upon the circ.u.mstances.

There are always three persons concerned, you know. In this case, as you have pardoned me for being serious, there is in the first place the great genius with his sacred message; you know how he learned that his life work was to be ruined by deafness, and how he poured his agony and despair into his greatest symphony, and into this sonata. That is the first person, Miss Davis."

He paused for a moment; and Helen took a deep breath, thinking that it was the strangest conversation she had ever been called upon to listen to during an evening's merriment. Yet she did not smile, for the man's deep, resonant voice fascinated her.

"And the second?" she asked.

"The second," said Mr. Howard, turning his dark, sunken eyes full upon the girl, "is another man, not a genius, but one who has suffered, I fear, nearly as much as one; a man who is very hungry for beauty, and very impatient of insincerity, and who is accustomed to look to the great masters of art for all his help and courage."

Helen felt very uncomfortable indeed.

"Evidently," she said, "I am the third."

"Yes," said Mr. Howard, "the pianist is the third. It is the pianist's place to take the great work and live it, and study it until he knows all that it means; and then--"

"I don't think I took it quite so seriously as that," said Helen, with a poor attempt at humility.

"No," said Mr. Howard, gravely; "it was made evident to me that you did not by every note you played; for you treated it as if it had been a Liszt show-piece."

Helen was of course exceedingly angry at those last blunt words; but she was too proud to let her vexation be observed. She felt that she had gotten herself into the difficulty by asking for serious criticism, for deep in her heart she knew that it was true, and that she would never have dared to play the sonata had she known that a musician was present. Helen felt completely humiliated, her few minutes' conversation having been enough to put her out of humor with herself and all of her surroundings. There was a long silence, in which she had time to think of what she had heard; she felt in spite of herself the folly of what she had done, and her whole triumph had suddenly come to look very small indeed; yet, as was natural, she felt only anger against the man who had broken the spell and destroyed her illusion. She was only the more irritated because she could not find any ground upon which to blame him.

It would have been very difficult for her to have carried on the conversation after that. Fortunately a diversion occurred, the young person who had last played having gone to the piano again, this time with a young man and a violin.

"Aunt Polly has found someone to take your place," said Helen, forcing a smile.

"Yes," said the other, "she told me we had another violinist."

The violinist played Raff's Cavatina, a thing with which fiddlers all love to exhibit themselves; he played it just a little off the key at times, as Helen might have told by watching her companion's eyebrows. She in the meantime was trying to recover her equanimity, and to think what else she could say. "He's the most uncomfortable man I ever met," she thought with vexation. "I wish I'd insisted upon keeping away from him!"

However, Helen was again relieved from her plight by the fact that as the fiddler stopped and the faint applause died out, she saw Mr.

Harrison coming towards her. Mr. Harrison had somehow succeeded in extricating himself from the difficulty in which his hostess had placed him, and had no doubt guessed that Helen was no better pleased with her new companion.

"May I join you?" he asked, as he neared the sofa.

"Certainly," said Helen, smiling; she introduced the two men, and Mr. Harrison sat down upon the other side of the girl. Somehow or other he seemed less endurable than he had just before, for his voice was not as soft as Mr. Howard's, and now that Helen's animation was gone she was again aware of the millionaire's very limited attainments.

"That was a very interesting thing we just heard," he said. "What was it? Do you know?"

Helen answered that it was Raff's Cavatina.