s in your tones, and your strength in your fingers. What
has come over you?"

"Am I changed?" said Velasco. His throat contracted. He held the
glass to his lips, but he did not drink.

The Kapellmeister gazed at him strangely: "Yes, you are changed.
In one year you have grown ten. What it is I cannot tell, but the look
of your face is different. The mouth has grown rugged and harsh; there
are lines under your eyes, and your lips are firm, not full. It is as
if a storm had burst on a young birch, and torn it from its bank amid
the grass and the heather, and an oak had grown up in its place,
brought into life by the wind and the gale."

Velasco tossed off the Moselle and laughed bitterly: "I have done with
pleasure," he said, "I have lived and I know life; that is all. There
is nothing in it but work and music."

"Tell me, Velasco," said the Kapellmeister slowly, "Don't be offended
if I ask, or think that I am trying to pry into your affairs. When you
were rehearsing this morning it occurred to me.--There was something
new in the quality of your tone. Before, you were a virtuoso; your
technique was something to gaze at and harken to, and there was no
technique like it in Europe; now--"

"Well--now?" cried Velasco, "Was I clumsy this morning? Was anything
the matter? Potztausend!--why didn't you tell me?"

His eyes gleamed suddenly under his brows and he twirled his fingers,
toying with them nervously. "Gott--Kapellmeister! Why didn't you tell
me at once?"

"Now--" said the Kapellmeister: He looked up at the Bierfass, hanging
by its chains, and his gaze wandered slowly over the legends on the
wall, the gargoyles dripping; the mugs with their quaint tops and their
handles twisted, the roof in its octagonal vaults, smoky, begrimed; and
then back again to the table, and the flask before Velasco, yellow and
slanting.

"Now--" he said, "you are no longer a virtuoso, you are an artist, and
that, as you know, is something infinitely greater and higher and more
difficult of attainment. All the great violins of my time I have
heard; most of them I have conducted."

Ritter's voice lowered suddenly to a whisper, and he leaned forward,
touching the other's hand with his own: "I tell you, Velasco, and I
know what I say--you played to-day at rehearsal as none of them played,
not even Sarasati, king of virtuosi; or Joachim, prince of artists.
You played as if the violin were yourself, and your bow were tearin