e reflected, must be an extraordinary
person if she really deserved that gaze. He didn't believe that she
quite did. His dissatisfaction with the music extended itself to the
musician and, looking from her face to the girl's, he remembered with
scepticism Betty's account of their relation.

A group of Chopin Preludes and a Brahms Rhapsodie Hongroise brought the
first half of the concert to a close, and Gregory watched with
amusement, during the ensuing scene, the vagaries of the intoxicated
crowd. People rose to their feet, clapping, shouting, bellowing,
screaming. He saw on the platform the face of the massive lady, haggard,
fierce, devouring; the face of the shy lady, suffused, the eyes half
dazed with adoration like those of a saint in rapture. Old Mrs.
Forrester, with her juvenile auburn head, laughed irrepressibly while
she clapped, like a happy child. The old poet was nearly moved to tears.
Only the _protegee_ remained, as it were, outside the infection. She
smiled slightly and steadily, as if in a proud contentment, and clapped
now and then quite softly, and she turned once and scanned the audience
with eyes accustomed to ovations and appraising the significance of this
one.

Madame Okraska was recalled six times, but she could not be prevailed
upon to give an encore, though for a long time a voice bayed
intermittently:--"The Berceuse! Chopin's Berceuse!" The vast harmonies
of entreaty and delight died down to sporadic solos, taken up more and
more faint-heartedly by weary yet still hopeful hands.

Still smiling slightly, with a preoccupied air, the young girl looked
about her, or leaned forward to listen to some kindly bantering
addressed to her by Sir Alliston. She hardly spoke, but Gregory
perceived that she was by no means shy. She so pleasantly engaged his
attention that when Sir Alliston got up from his seat next hers there
was another motive than the mere wish to speak to his old friend in his
intention of joining Mrs. Forrester for a few moments. The project was
not definite and he abandoned it when his relative, Miss Eleanor
Scrotton, tense, significant and wearing the sacramental expression
customary with her on such occasions, hurried to the empty seat and
dropped into it. Eleanor's enthusiasms oppressed him and Betty had told
him that Madame Okraska was become the most absorbing of them. His
mother and Eleanor's had been cousins. Her father, the late Sir Jonas
Scrotton, heavily distinguished in the