an. He felt a sudden zest of life; the lights
danced before his eyes and the concert hall blazed into unimaginable
splendour. When the soprano soloist came on, Paul forgot even the
nastiness of his teacher's being there, and gave himself up to the
peculiar intoxication such personages always had for him. The soloist
chanced to be a German woman, by no means in her first youth, and the
mother of many children; but she wore a satin gown and a tiara, and she
had that indefinable air of achievement, that world-shine upon her, which
always blinded Paul to any possible defects.

After a concert was over, Paul was often irritable and wretched until he
got to sleep,--and tonight he was even more than usually restless. He had
the feeling of not being able to let down; of its being impossible to
give up this delicious excitement which was the only thing that could
be called living at all. During the last number he withdrew and, after
hastily changing his clothes in the dressing-room, slipped out to the
side door where the singer's carriage stood. Here he began pacing rapidly
up and down the walk, waiting to see her come out.

Over yonder the Schenley, in its vacant stretch, loomed big and square
through the fine rain, the windows of its twelve stories glowing like
those of a lighted card-board house under a Christmas tree. All the
actors and singers of any importance stayed there when they were in the
city, and a number of the big manufacturers of the place lived there in
the winter. Paul had often hung about the hotel, watching the people go
in and out, longing to enter and leave school-masters and dull care
behind him for ever.

At last the singer came out, accompanied by the conductor, who helped
her into her carriage and closed the door with a cordial _auf
wiedersehen_,--which set Paul to wondering whether she were
not an old sweetheart of his. Paul followed the carriage over to the
hotel, walking so rapidly as not to be far from the entrance when the
singer alighted and disappeared behind the swinging glass doors which
were opened by a negro in a tall hat and a long coat. In the moment that
the door was ajar, it seemed to Paul that he, too, entered. He seemed to
feel himself go after her up the steps, into the warm, lighted building,
into an exotic, a tropical world of shiny, glistening surfaces and
basking ease. He reflected upon the mysterious dishes that were brought
into the dining-room, the green bottles in buckets of