d the music standing
open before him, while his body, bent thus double, swayed vigorously
from side to side. His face was crimson, and on his forehead stood out
beads of perspiration. He had no cuffs on, and his sleeves were a
little turned back. The movement at an end, he paused, and drawing a
soiled handkerchief from his pocket, passed it rapidly over neck and
brow. In the ADAGIO which followed, he displayed an extreme delicacy of
touch--not, however, but what this also cost him some exertion, for,
previous to the striking of each faint, soft note, his hand described a
curve in the air, the finger he was about to use, lowered, the others
slightly raised, and there was always a second of something like
suspense, before it finally sank upon the expectant note. But suddenly,
without warning, just as the last, lingering tones were dying to the
close they sought, the ADAGIO slipped over into the limpid gaiety of
the RONDO, and then, there was no time more for premeditation: then his
hands twinkled up and down, joining, crossing, flying asunder, alert
with little sprightly quirks and turns, going ever more nimbly, until
the brook was a river, the allegretto a prestissimo, which flew wildly
to its end amid a shower of dazzling trills.

Schwarz stood grave and apparently impassive; from time to time,
however, when unobserved, he swept the three listeners with a rapid
glance. Maurice Guest was quite carried away; he had never heard
playing like this, and he leaned forward in his seat, and gazed full at
the player, in open admiration. But his neighbour, a pale, thin man,
with one of those engaging and not uncommon faces which, in mould of
feature, in mildness of expression, and still more in the cut of hair
and beard, bear so marked a likeness to the conventional
Christ-portrait: this neighbour looked on with only a languid interest,
which seemed unable to get the upper hand of melancholy thoughts.
Maurice, who believed his feelings shared by all about him, was chilled
by such indifference: he only learned later, after they had become
friends, that nothing roused in Boehmer a real or lasting interest,
save what he, Boehmer, did himself. Dove sat absorbed, as reverent as
if at prayer; but there were also moments when, with his head a little
on one side, he wore an anxious air, as if not fully at one with the
player's rendering; others again, after a passage of peculiar
brilliancy, when he threw at Schwarz a humbly grateful look.