f her cruel deception crept into his consciousness. He
was chilled for several seconds. Grief at his lost love, implacable
anger at her trickery, crowded into his unhappy brain. But he only bowed
to Cilli, and summoning all his will he politely said:--

"It is quite true that when the Japanese choose to play the piano, we
Europeans must shut up shop." He hurried out to the road and walked
desperately....

The next morning, as he nervously paced the platform of the Ischl
railway station, he encountered his old friend Alfred Bruenfeld, the
jovial Viennese pianist.

"Hullo!"

"Hullo!"

"Not going back to Vienna?"

"Yes--I'm tired of the country."

"But, man, you are pale and tired. Have you been studying up here after
your doctor bade you rest?" The concern in Bruenfeld's voice touched
Davos. He shook his head, then bethought himself of something.

"Alfred, you are acquainted with everybody in Europe. How is it you
never told me about that strange Grabowski crowd--you know, the
granddaughter of Chopin's first love?" Bruenfeld looked at him with
instant curiosity.

"You also?" he said. The young man blushed. After _that_ he could never
forgive! The other continued:--

"Granddaughter, fiddlesticks! They are not Poles, those Grabowskis, but
impostors. Their real name is--is--" Davos started.

"What, you have met them?"

"Yes, the stupid father, the odious uncle, the fair Constantia--what a
meek saint!--and that diabolical Japanese, who plays the piano like a
house on fire." Tears came to the eyes of Marco Davos.

"Did they--I mean, did _she_ take you in, too?"

"Here, at Ischl, last summer," was the grim reply.

XVIII

THE TUNE OF TIME

Ferval returned to Rouen after a fatiguing trip down the Seine as far as
Croisset, the old home of Gustave Flaubert. Here he viewed, not without
a dismal sense of fame and its futility, the little garden-house in
which the masterpieces of the great Frenchman had been conceived in joy
and executed in sorrow. He met the faithful Colange, one-time attendant
of Flaubert, and from him learned exacerbating details of the novelist's
lonesome years; so he was in a mood of irritation as he went ashore near
the Boieldieu Bridge and slowly paced toward his hotel. He loved this
Norman Rouen, loved the battered splendour of Notre-Dame Cathedral,
loved the church of Saint-Ouen--that miracle of the Gothic, with its
upspringing turrets, its portal as perfect as a Bach fugue. And