ENDUNTERHALTUNG, she sat in the front row of seats, and made her
hands ache with applauding. Afterwards she lay wakeful, with hot
cheeks, and dreamt extravagant dreams of sending him great baskets and
bouquets of flowers, with coloured streamers to them, such as the
singers in the opera received on a gala night. And though no name was
given, he would know from whom they came. But on the only occasion she
tried to carry out the scheme, and ventured inside a florist's shop,
her scant command of German, and the excessive circumstantiality of the
matter, made her feel so uncomfortable that she had fled precipitately,
leaving the shopman staring after her in surprise.

Things were at this pass when, one day late in May, Ephie went as usual
to take her lesson. It was two o'clock on a cloudless afternoon, and so
warm that the budding lilac in squares and gardens began to give out
fragrance. In the whitewashed, many-windowed corridors of the
Conservatorium, the light was harsh and shadowless; it jarred on one,
wounded the nerves. So at least thought Schilsky, who was hanging about
the top storey of the building, in extreme ill-humour. He had been
forced to make an appointment with a man to whom he owed money; the
latter had not yet appeared, and Schilsky lounged and swore, with his
two hands deep in his pockets, and his sulkiest expression. But
gradually, he found himself listening to the discordant tones of a
violin--at first unconsciously, as we listen when our thoughts are
elsewhere engaged, then more and more intently. In one of the junior
masters' rooms, some one had begun to play scales in the third
position, uncertainly, with shrill feebleness, seeking out each note,
only to produce it falsely. As this scraping worked on him, Schilsky
could not refrain from rubbing his teeth together, and screwing up his
face as though he had toothache; now that the miserable little tones
had successfully penetrated his ear, they hit him like so many blows.

"Damn him for a fool!" he said savagely to himself, and found an outlet
for his irritation in repeating these words aloud. Then, however, as an
ETUDE was commenced, with an impotence that struck him as purely
vicious, he could endure the torment no longer. He had seen in the
BUREAU the particular master, and knew that the latter had not yet come
upstairs. Going to the room from which the sounds issued, he stealthily
opened the door.

A girl was standing with her back to him, and wa