ood the words. She sang in English, and what
more do you want in singing?

But the buzz at my left went on fiercely. "So the Bujoli calls _that_
voice-production, does she? Humph! In Germany we wouldn't call the cows
home with such singing." It was surely Frau Makart who spoke. There was
a huge clapping of hands, fans waved, and I heard whispers, "Yes, rather
pretty; but dresses in bad taste; good eyes; walks stiffly. Who is she?
What was it she sang?"

More chatter. I wriggled away to my first position near the piano, but
not without much personal discomfort. I was allowed to pass because, for
some reason or other, I was supposed to be running the function. Upon
reaching the piano Edith beckoned to me rapidly, and I slid across the
polished floor, where she was talking to that hated Tompkins, and asked
what I could do for her.

"Hold my music until I play; that's a good fellow." I hate to be
considered a "good fellow," but what could I do? Edith, who seemed to
have recovered her aplomb, continued her conversation with Percy
Tompkins.

"You know, Mr. Tompkins, Chopin is for me the only composer. You know,
his nocturnes fill me with a sense of nothingness--the divine _neant_,
_nirvana_, you call it. Now, Gruenfeld--"

Tompkins interrupted rudely: "Gruenfeld can't play Chopin. Give me the
'Chopinzee.' He plays Chopin. As Schumann says: 'The Chopin polonaises
are cannon buried in flowers,' Now, Gruenfeld is a--"

"No poet!" said I, indignantly, for I never could admire the chubby
Viennese pianist. Tompkins turned and looked at me, but never noticed my
correction.

"Oh, Miss Wegstaffe," he continued vivaciously--how I hated that
vivacity--"did you hear that new story about a wit and the young man who
asked him to define George Meredith's position in literature?
'Meredith,' said the other, pompously, 'Meredith is a prose Browning,'
and the young man thanked the great man for this side light thrown on
English letters, when the poet added with a twinkle in his eye,
'Browning himself was a prose Browning.' Now, isn't that delicious, Miss
Wegstaffe; isn't that--"

A volley of _hists-hists_ and _hushes_ came over the room as I vainly
tried to see the point of Tompkins' story. Every one laughed at his
jokes, but to me they seemed superficial and flippant.

The piano by this time was being manipulated by a practical hand. Herr
Wunderheim, a Bulgarian pianist, was playing what the programme called a
sonata in X dur, by T