eps above. Others were infected by the
successful outlawry and there were some moments of swaying and striving
before the crowd adjusted itself to its self-protective solidity.
Emerged upon the broader stairs they ascended panting and scurrying, in
a wild stampede, to the sudden quiet and chill and emptiness of the
familiar hall, with its high-ranged plaster cupids, whose cheeks and
breasts and thighs were thrown comically into relief by a thick coating
of dust. Here a permanent fog seemed to hang under the roof; only a few
lights twinkled frugally; and the querulous voice of the
programme-seller punctuated the monotonous torrent of feet. Row upon
row, the seats were filled as if by tumultuous waters entering appointed
channels, programmes rustled, sandwiches were drawn from clammy packets,
and the thin-faced lady, iniquitously ensconced in the middle of the
front row in the gallery, had taken out a strip of knitting and was
blandly ready for the evening.

"I always come up here," said one of the ladies from Kensington to a
friend. "One hears her pianissimo more perfectly than anywhere else.
What a magnificent programme! I shall be glad to hear her give the
Schumann Fantaisie in C Major again."

"I think I look forward more to the Bach Fantaisie than to anything,"
said her companion.

She exposed herself to a pained protest: "Oh surely not; not Bach; I do
not come for my Bach to Okraska. She belongs too definitely to the
romantics to grasp Bach. Beethoven, if you will; she may give us the
Appassionata superbly; but not Bach; she lacks self-effacement."

"Liszt said that no one played Bach as she did."

Authority did not serve her. "Liszt may have said it; Brahms would not
have;" was the rejoinder.

Down in the orchestra chairs the audience was roughly to be divided into
the technical and the personal devotees; those who chose seats from
which they could dwell upon Madame Okraska's full face over the shining
surfaces of the piano or upon her profile from the side; and those who,
from behind her back, were dedicated to the study of her magical hands.

"I do hope," said a girl in the centre of the front row of chairs, a
place of dizzy joy, for one might almost touch the goddess as she sat at
the piano, "I do hope she's not getting fat. Someone said they heard she
was. I never want to see her again if she gets fat. It would be too
awful."

The girl with her conjectured sadly that Madame Okraska must be well
over f