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 "Légende." 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?"

"No, father. She evidently fainted from excitement. I have never seen any one listen as she listened to you."

"Swooned from excitement," repeats Lensky. "A pretty young woman! Mais c'est un succès de Torreador--the highest that a man can attain."

The carriage stops before the Hotel Westminster.

"Will you dine with me?" Lensky asks, as he gets out.

"If you will permit me," replies Nikolai.

"Only no such formalities!" bursts out the violinist. "Do not force yourself to anything from politeness. You must not, if you do not wish. The company which you will find with me will not suit you without that."

Lensky says that quite roughly and angrily. In general, the opposing manners of the two men are strange enough. At heart they evidently cling to each other very greatly; still, a perceptible lack of confidence is apparent in the relations between father and son.

"And at what hour may I come?" asks Nikolai.

"May I come!" his father mimics him. "That is really not to be borne. Leave me in peace with your aristocratic manners. Do not forget that you have a proletary for a father. My guests come at half-past eight, and you can come when you will."

With that they have reached the first story of the hotel, where are the violinist's secluded rooms.

Nikolai's room is one story higher. "For, near each other, we would mutually annoy each other," the virtuoso has from the beginning signified to his son. "Adieu à tantôt," he calls to the young man. With that they separate.

When Nikolai joins Lensky, half an hour later, they are already at table.

The atmosphere of the little dining-room is filled with the savory odor of potage bisque, the virtuoso's favorite dish. Gay dishes of dessert stand on the table, the chandelier sheds its glaring light over an extremely mixed assembly. At Lensky's right sits Madame Grévin, a very old friend of his; at his left, the Countess d'Olbreuse, who, probably to accentuate the situation, has kept on her hat. This great lady, in the rôle of guest in artistic circles, is in some manner annoying to Nikolai. He feels especially constrained, seems to himself awkward in his pedantically correct clothes; he wears a dress-coat and white cravat, because after dinner he is going into society--laughable. The place opposite his father has been left vacant for him. His eyes wander over the guests. He sees a strikingly dressed young harpist, with loud, noisy manners and bold expressions, Mademoiselle Klein, from Vienna; then a violin virtuoso of good family, Monsieur Paul, not without intelligence and wit, but without belief in his art, which he seems to consider a moderately remunerative trade; a vain French journalist with pretentious cynicism--no single artist of really significant renown; and in the midst of all this unenlivening gang--his father.

"Can he feel at home with these men?" Nikolai asks himself, and looks at him scrutinizingly.

At first he sits quite silently there, and only addresses a few friendly words across the table to Madame Bulatow, the wife of a poor, unrecognized composer. His boundless kindness of heart never fails with poor unfortunates, however raging, untamably wild, quite rough he may otherwise be. But to no one is he so tender as to his own country people. Poor Russians in a strange land he treats as relatives.

The further the dinner progresses, the worse becomes the universal tone, the more unrestrained Lensky. His manner to the Countess d'Olbreuse becomes completely inadmissible.

In the beginning he scarcely noticed her. But as she, from vanity and a whim, had evidently determined to make his conquest, to rouse him from his indifference with all kinds of flatteries and coquetries, he gradually warms, presses her hand, whispers all kinds of insidious remarks to her with wicked glances, permits himself so much that at last she is frightened and tries to restrain him. But to restrain Lensky after the second bottle of wine, at the close of a good dinner, and near a very pretty woman, who has suddenly become prudish after she had, a few minutes before, thrown herself at his head, is no easy thing.

Nikolai, whose blood burns in his brown cheeks, foolishly lets himself be brought to remark a shy, "Mais, mon père!" and by that attains a not at all pleasing result. Always excited by the slightest weight or restraint, to violent opposition, Lensky is least of all inclined to submit to be lectured by his "aristocratic son." His face, flushed by wine, becomes distorted, his eyes glisten. He is just about to say something horrible, unpardonable--the word dies on his lips; he turns his head and listens. A very excited child's voice outside is heard by turns with a waiter's voice: "I wish to go in, laissez-moi donc!"

Was it possible? The door opens. Breathless, with cheeks flushed from the cold, a girl of perhaps seventeen years bursts in and into Lensky's arms, who has hastily sprung up.

"Here I am at last!" said she, breathless, between laughing and