s were covered with the mementoes of a long
life. On the tables stood bowls of flowers, stacks of musical scores,
trays of wineglasses, cigarette boxes that had once been jewel cases,
half-empty teacups, and the gold purses or jet handbags of women who
reclined in the deep chairs with their faces turned toward the piano.

Men leaned smoking in the heavily curtained embrasures of the windows,
their foreheads lowered, their eyebrows casting over their eyes the
shadows as if of a profound fatigue. Beside the hall door loomed the
white mane of Brantome, who turned, at an inflow of artificial light,
to greet the small Italian woman that had recently become a prima donna.

And presently this song bird warbled for her comrades of the arts, as
she would have done in no other company. The air shook from her agile
cadenzas. A last, long trill, high and pure, died away vibrating in
the vases of iridescent glass.

Then some one persuaded Brantome to play a piece of Schumann's. And
once more Lilla heard _Vienna Carnival_.

When he had finished playing, Brantome sat down beside her.

"So it is as magical as ever, a bit of music?" he inquired, in his
rumbling, hoarse voice.

"You were playing that at the moment when I first saw my husband," she
said.

He contemplated her with his haggard old eyes. Patting her hand, he
declared:

"All these emotions that you, a beautiful young woman, have felt, I
believe that I, an ugly, worn-out old man, have felt, also. I, too,
have felt in my time that the world was at an end. I have suffered
from the same inability to return into life. Well, will you think me
cruel--shall I appear to you as the thief of an inestimable
treasure--if I tell you something? In time, sooner or later, one
recovers. I don't mean that one forgets. It is always there; and a
chance sound or perfume brings it back to one. But at last it returns
so gently! One feels then, instead of pain, almost a gentle,
melancholy pleasure. Then you will learn that there may be certain
subtle joys in grief."

She lowered her gaze, flinching inwardly, as one sometimes does when
credited with a feeling that one no longer fully deserves. A dismal
perplexity came to her, a little pang of treason, as she asked him:

"How can I hasten that day?"

He suggested:

"You might perhaps find some engrossing interest?"

Near the piano a group were discussing women's failures in music. One
heard the names of Chaminade, Augu