fiasco_? How to explain
such behavior on the part of one who was, from the crown of his head to
his toes, thoroughly a musician, a lover of all things musical, even
Kashkine, intimate and blind adorer of Gregoriev as his biography of
Ivan shows him to be, never discovered. Whether his native shyness
simply put off an evil hour as long as possible: whether, full of the
excitement of giving the final touches to his new work--a business which
always, throughout his life, made Ivan oblivious of everything
else,--rendered him really indifferent to the success of his symphony,
or whether he really believed conducting to be merely a matter of waving
a baton at each body of instruments as they entered or left the
_ensemble_, the principal actor of this little drama never explained.
Certainly, at the time, it did not occur to him to divine any purpose in
the Herr Direktor's easy acceptance of the flimsy excuses that he sent
to rehearsal after rehearsal. Suffice it to state that Ivan's first
appearance in the greenroom of the Grand Theatre--scene of the
much-discussed concert--was made at half-past seven o'clock on the
evening of October 16th: forty-five minutes before the overture was
announced to begin. Even now, he found himself the last to arrive of the
little group who were either to take part, or had some professional
interest in, the evening's performance. These greeted him jovially; but,
after he had drunk the glass of sherry pressed upon him, he was drawn
one side by two friends, Laroche and Nicholas Rubinstein, whose faces
had sobered into undisguised anxiety. Rubinstein spoke first:

"Are you too nervous to glance through the first page or two of the
score, here?" he demanded, his eyes taking quick review of Ivan's
immaculate costume and rather pallid face.

Ivan's answering laugh caught Anton's ear. "Nervous!" he echoed. "I
hadn't thought about it.--I know the thing by heart; still--where is the
score?"

Laroche answered silently by holding out to him the thick, leather-bound
sheets of the "Youth" symphony; at the same time pointing out to Ivan
that, instead of third, he was to come second on the programme:
Mademoiselle Pavario having demanded that she give her _aria_ just
before the intermission, for the sake of the probable encore.

Somehow, as Laroche quietly explained this fact, and Ivan, opening his
familiar book, discovered for the first time certain blue-pencillings,
made therein by Rubinstein during the re