nd only was conceivable to that
last discussion. The moment arrived when the brain of M. Cartel cried
vehemently for expression, when his hand, imprisoned in the small
fingers of Jacqueline, was no longer to be restrained, when he sprang
from his chair and rushed to the piano, his coarse black hair an untidy
mat, his ugly face alight with God's gift of inspiration.

'What had he said? Was this, then, not magnificent--wonderful?'

And, seating himself, he unloosed into the common room a beauty of sound
more adorning than the rarest devices of the decorator's art--a mesh of
delicate harmonies that snared the imaginations of his three listeners
and sent them winging to the very borders of their varying realms.

M. Lucien Cartel in every-day life and to the casual observer was a good
fellow with a fund of enthusiasm and a ready tongue; M. Lucien Cartel to
the woman he loved and in the enchanted world of his art was a mortal
imbued warmly and surely with a spark of the divinity he derided. There
is no niggardliness in Bohemia: it made him as happy to give of his
music as it made his listeners to receive, with the consequence that
time was dethroned and that four people sat entranced, claiming nothing
from the world outside, more than content in the knowledge that the
world had no eyes for the doings of a little room on the heights of
Montmartre.

From opera to opera M. Cartel wandered, now humming a passage under his
breath in accompaniment to his playing, again raising his soft, southern
voice in an abandonment of enthusiasm.

It was following close upon some such enthusiastic moment that Max rose,
crossed the room, and taking a violin and bow from where they lay upon a
wooden bench against the wall, carried them silently to the piano.

As silently M. Cartel received them and, lifting the violin, tucked it
under his chin and raised the bow.

There is no need to detail the magic that followed upon that simple
action. The world--even his own Paris--has never heard of M. Lucien
Cartel, and cares not to know of the pieces that he played, the degree
of his technique, the truth of his interpretation; but when at last the
hand that held the violin dropped to his side and, lifting his right
arm, he wiped his damp forehead with the sleeve of his coat, the faces
of his audience were pale as the faces of those who have looked upon
hidden places, and in the eyes of the little Jacqueline there were
tears.

A moment of silence;