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I made my way as well as I could for the crowd, to my hostess, listened, with what patience I might, to some polite praise of my playing, and made my request.

‘Mrs. Destrier, I have an immense favour to ask; introduce me to Madame Romanoff!’

She gave me a quick, shrewd smile; then I remembered stories of her intimate quaintness.

‘My dear young man! I have no objection. Only I warn you, she is not conversational; you will make no good of it, and you will be disappointed; perhaps that will be best. Please remember, I am responsible for nobody.’

‘Is she so dangerous?’ I asked. ‘But never mind; I believe that I have something to say which may interest her.’

‘Oh, for that!’ she smiled elliptically; ‘yes, she is most dangerous. But I will introduce you; you shall tell me how you succeed.’

I bowed and smiled; she laid a light hand on my arm; and I piloted her to the desired corner. It seemed that the chance was with me. The little fluent Provencal had just vacated his seat; and when the prima-donna had acknowledged the hasty mention of my name, with a bare inclination of her head, I was emboldened to succeed to it. And then I was silent. In the perfection of that dolorous face, I could not but be reminded of the tradition which has always ascribed something fatal and inevitable to the possession of great gifts: of genius or uncommon fortune, or singular personal beauty; and the common-place of conversation failed me.

After a while she looked askance at me, with a sudden flash of resentment.

‘You speak no French, Monsieur! And yet you write it well enough; I have read your stories.’

I acknowledged Madame’s irony, permitted myself to hope that my efforts had met with Madame’s approval.

‘ A la bonne heure! I perceive you also speak it. Is that why you wished to be presented, to hear my criticisms?’

‘Let me answer that question when you have answered mine.’

She glanced curiously over her feathered fan, then with the slightest upward inclination of her statuesque shoulders–‘I admire your books; but are your women quite just? I prefer your playing.’

‘That is better, Madame! It was to talk of that I came.’

‘Your playing?’

‘My violin.’

‘You want me to look at it? It is a Cremona?’

‘It is not a Cremona; but if you like, I will give it you.’

Her dark eyes shone out in amazed amusement.

‘You are eccentric, Monsieur! but your nation has a privilege of eccentricity. At least, you amuse me; and I have wearied myself enough this long evening. Show me your violin; I am something of a virtuosa.’

I took the instrument from its case, handed it to her in silence, watching her gravely. She received it with the dexterous hands of a musician, looked at the splendid stains on the back, then bent over towards the light in a curious scrutiny of the little, faded signature of its maker, the fecit of an obscure Bavarian of the seventeenth century; and it was a long time before she raised her eyes.

When she spoke, her rich voice had a note of imperious entreaty in it. ‘Your violin interests me, Monsieur! Oh, I know that wood! It came to you–?’

‘A legacy from an esteemed friend.’

She shot back. ‘His name?’ with the flash which I waited for.

‘Maurice Cristich, Madame!’

We were deserted in our corner. The company had strayed in, one by one, to the large salon with the great piano, where a young Russian musician, a pupil of Chopin, sat down to play, with no conventional essay of preliminary chords, an expected morsel. The strains of it wailed in just then, through the heavy, screening curtains; a mad valse of his own, that no human feet could dance to, a pitiful, passionate thing that thrilled the nerves painfully, ringing the changes between voluptuous sorrow and the merriment of devils, and burdened always with the weariness of ‘all the Russias,’ the proper Welt-schmerz of a young, disconsolate people. It seemed to charge the air, like electricity, with passionate undertones; it gave intimate facilities, and a tense personal note to our interview.