she said; and then, although herself not clear why she
should have answered these searching eyes, she added, looking at
Maurice: "I come from Australia."

If she had said she was a visitant from another world, Maurice would
not, at the moment, have felt much surprise; but on hearing the name of
this distant land, on which he would probably never set foot, a sense
of desolation overcame him. He realised anew, with a pang, what an
utter stranger he was to her; of her past life, her home, her country,
he knew and could know nothing.

"That is very far away," he said, speaking out of this feeling, and
then was vexed with himself for having done so. His words sounded
foolish as they lingered on in the stillness that followed them, and
would, he believed, lay him open to Madeleine's ridicule. But he had
not much time in which to repent of them; the music had been found, and
she was going again. He heard her refuse an invitation to stay: she had
an engagement at half-past four. And now Dove, who, throughout, had
kept in the background, looked at his watch and took up his hat: he had
previously offered, unopposed, to do the long wait outside the theatre,
which was necessary when one had no tickets, and now it was time to go.
But when Louise heard the word theatre, she laid a slim, ungloved hand
on Dove's arm.

"The very thing for such a night!"

They all said "AUF WIEDERSEHEN!" to one another; she did not offer to
shake hands again, and Maurice nursed a faint hope that it was on his
account. He opened the window, leant out, and watched them, until they
went round the corner of the street.

Madeleine smiled shrewdly behind his back, but when he turned, she was
grave. She did not make any reference to what had passed, nor did she,
as he feared she would, put questions to him: instead, she showed him a
song of Krafft's, and asked him to play the accompaniment for her. He
gratefully consented, without knowing what he was undertaking. For the
song, a setting of a poem by Lenau, was nominally in C sharp minor; but
it was black with accidentals, and passed through many keys before it
came to a close in D flat major. Besides this, the right hand had much
hard passage-work in quaint scales and broken octaves, to a syncopated
bass of chords that were adapted to the stretch of no ordinary hand.

"LIEBLOS UND OHNE GOTT AUF EINER HAIDE," sang Madeleine on the high F
sharp; but Maurice, having collected neither his wits nor his finger