n face of a Greek faun nursing a violoncello,
and listening with a dream in his eyes. A woman with the beauty of
some northern race sat in an oak chair with carved arms, which she
clasped tightly. I saw the sparkle of a ring on her right hand. The
stone had caught a ray from the lamp and was alive with light. Other
people with strange, interesting faces were grouped about this salon,
absorbed in that music of the violin, which played something of
spring, so lightly, so delicately, that our spirit danced to it, and joy
came into one's senses as on a sunlit day, when the wind is playing
above fields of flowers. Afterwards the cellist drew long, deep chords
from his great instrument, and his thin fingers quivered against the
thick strings, and made them sing grandly and nobly. Then the man
at the piano played alone, after five minutes of silence, in which a few
words were spoken, about some theme which would work out with
strange effects.

"I will try it," said the pianist. "It amuses me to improvise. If it would
not worry you--"

It was not wearisome. He played with a master-touch, and the room
was filled with rushing notes and crashing harmonies. For a little time
I could not guess the meaning of their theme. Then suddenly I was
aware of it. It was the tramp of arms, the roar of battle, the song of
victory and of death. Wailing voices came across fields of darkness,
and then, with the dawn, birds sang, while the dead lay still.

The musician gave a queer laugh. "Any good?"

"C'est la guerre!" said a girl by my side. She shivered a little.

They were Danes, Norwegians, and Swedes in that room, with a few
Parisians among them. Students to whom all life is expressed in
music, they went on with their work in spite of the war. But war had
touched their spirit too, with its great tragedy, and found expression in
their art. It was but one glimpse behind the scenes of Paris, in time of
war, and in thousands of other rooms, whose window-curtains were
drawn to veil their light from hostile aircraft, the people who come to
Paris as the great university of intellect and emotion, continued their
studies and their way of life, with vibrations of fiddle-strings and
scraping of palettes and adventures among books.

Even the artists' clubs had not all closed their doors, though
so many young painters were mixing blood with mud and watching
impressionistic pictures of ruined villages through the smoke of shells.
Through cigarette s