ad memories for him; but it was the place which must always be his
home, after all. For where the first years of childhood are spent,
there, however humble the place, are rooted deep some of the soul's
loveliest plants: there rest associations of love and of joy far more
powerful, more unforgettable, than any that can be made in after life:
and these make a consecration recognized by the most careless, the most
unsentimental of us all. Ivan, indeed, rejoiced daily that he had not to
begin life again in a strange city. But he soon perceived that he had
formed an astonishingly mistaken notion of what that life was to be. He
had believed it would bear a strong resemblance to the existence he had
been leading for the past years: so many afternoon hours among
students--this time as teacher, instead of pupil; so many for rest,
meals, exercise; the rest of the time spent in quiet solitude, at his
own beloved work.

Two thirds of this programme he did, indeed, carry out; though not
without constant difficulties in escaping those friendly spirits who
would have kept him for hours at a time over a meal, out of sheer
conviviality. And it was three weeks or more before the absent-minded
dreamer became convinced of the hopelessness of attempting his own work
in that particular atmosphere. For Ivan was of a type, fortunately rare,
which demands a large amount of daily solitude. Loneliness he might
dread--and bear. But isolation during his working hours he must have, at
whatever price. And to expect isolation in Nicholas Rubinstein's
apartment, was, truly, to cry for the moon. Regularly, all day, the
little living-room overflowed with visitors; nor did any of these
hesitate to comply with any requested musical exhibition, despite the
fact that, during eight hours of the working day, the apartment
resounded with violin exercises emitted from the bedroom of young
Shradik. Even this was not all; for the house was in the heart of the
musicians' quarter. And all day, from apartments below, from rooms
above, came an endless banging, shrieking and caterwauling from
embryonic _tenori_ and _virtuosi_, such as, within a month, would have
cured all but the most persistent music-lovers of any further desire for
the expression of that abstract art.

Ivan _was_ of the most persistent. Therefore, towards the middle of
November, his nerves raw and quivering under baffled attempts to compose
against the Devil's Chorus rising to heaven from every side