"At what? I was wondering what right I had to inflict all this on you.
I suppose when I came in you were talking of something worth while."
She turned again to Brantome. "And _Marco Polo_?"

"The best tone poem since _Don Quixote_," he said, rising and making
her a bow. "As far as it has gone. It is not finished yet."

"It soon will be. Won't it, David?"

"Oh, another month with luck," he returned lightly, trying to lift a
wineglass, and spilling on the cloth the champagne that had been
prescribed by Dr. Fallows.

She caught his wrist. A pang passed through her heart. She showed
them a new expression, or else an old one for which they had been
hoping, as she exclaimed in alarm:

"You're not so well to-night!"

And, as Hamoud was wheeling David into the living room, she protested
to Brantome:

"I can't leave him for a day without something happening."

"Then for God's sake don't, at least till this piece is done." The old
Frenchman pulled her back, and whispered, "Why, this afternoon he was
nearly beside himself. How can he work----"

"About what?" she ejaculated, glancing down at his hand on her arm.

"How should I know, if you don't?"

In the living room Brantome did not sit down. Flushed from the wine
that he had drunk, striding to and fro, he began a rigmarole about
"David's future." His voice was nearly ferocious when he prophesied
the subjugation of the public, which might be aroused, by precisely the
right persuasion, to a tumult of applause. Yes, they must all be
conquered, until, as in the case of Beethoven for instance, the name of
the genius appeared as though written like a portent in the sky, above
the heads even of throngs that knew nothing of music, that would never
hear these harmonies, but that would be filled all the same with
reverential awe.

He had never before revealed this thirst for undiscriminating homage.
They hardly recognized him. The old leonine fellow was transfigured,
as though by megalomania. He seemed larger, and slowly made the
gestures of an emperor.

He darted into the study, as Lilla said to David:

"The piece will stand up for itself, I think. He's becoming almost too
ridiculous."

But in the other room Brantome began beating out fragments of _Marco
Polo_. The familiar sounds took on a startling majesty in the
atmosphere heavily charged with the player's exultation. One had an
illusion that this music was irradiating from the house all over the