verent tip-toe and taking favourable seats. His breast filled with
bitter satisfaction.

So they had to come, the arrogant Americans; they had to swarm like
rats to the pied piper. He could draw them at will, the haughty
heathen--draw them by the magic of his finger-touch on pieces of
ivory. Lo, they were coming, more and more of them! Through the corner
of his eye he espied the figures drifting in from the corridors,
peering in spellbound at the doors.

With a great crash on the keys, he shook off his morbid mood, and
plunged into Scarlatti's Sonata in A, his fingers frolicking all over
the board, bent on a dominating exhibition of technique. As he
stopped, there was a storm of hand-clapping. Rozenoffski gave a
masterly start of surprise, and turned his leonine head in dazed
bewilderment. Was he not then alone? '_Gott im Himmel!_' he murmured,
and, furiously banging down the piano-lid, stalked from these
presumptuous mortals who had jarred the artist's soliloquy.

But the next afternoon found him again at the public piano, devoting
all the magic of his genius to charming a contemptible Christendom. He
gave them Beethoven and Bach, Paradies and Tschaikowski, unrolled to
them the vast treasures of his art and memory. And very soon, lo! the
Christian rats were pattering back again, only more wisely and
cautiously. They came crawling from every part of the ship's compass.
Newcomers were warned whisperingly to keep from applause. In vain. An
enraptured greenhorn shouted 'Encore!' The musician awoke from his
trance, stared dreamily at the Philistines; then, as the presence of
listeners registered itself upon his expressive countenance, he rose
again--but this time as more in sorrow than in anger--and stalked
sublimely up the swarming stairs.

It became a tradition to post guards at the doors to warn all comers
as to the habits of the great unknown, who could only beat his music
out if he imagined himself unheard. Scouts watched his afternoon
advance upon the piano in an empty hall, and the word was passed to
the little army of music-lovers. Silently the rats gathered, scurrying
in on noiseless paws, stealing into the chairs, swarming about the
doorways, pricking up their ears in the corridors. And through the
awful hush rose the master's silvery notes in rapturous self-oblivion
till the day began to wane, and the stewards to appear with the
tea-cups.

And the larger his audience grew, the fiercer grew his resentment
a