se. The Duke's piano solo, which was the last item in the first
half of the programme, was eagerly awaited. Already, whispered first
from the lips of Oover and the others who had come on from the Junta,
the news of his resolve had gone from ear to ear among the men. He, for
his part, had forgotten the scene at the Junta, the baleful effect of
his example. For him the Hall was a cave of solitude--no one there but
Zuleika and himself. Yet almost, like the late Mr. John Bright, he heard
in the air the beating of the wings of the Angel of Death. Not awful
wings; little wings that sprouted from the shoulders of a rosy and
blindfold child. Love and Death--for him they were exquisitely one. And
it seemed to him, when his turn came to play, that he floated, rather
than walked, to the dais.

He had not considered what he would play tonight. Nor, maybe, was he
conscious now of choosing. His fingers caressed the keyboard vaguely;
and anon this ivory had voice and language; and for its master, and for
some of his hearers, arose a vision. And it was as though in delicate
procession, very slowly, listless with weeping, certain figures passed
by, hooded, and drooping forasmuch as by the loss of him whom they were
following to his grave their own hold on life had been loosened. He
had been so beautiful and young. Lo, he was but a burden to be carried
hence, dust to be hidden out of sight. Very slowly, very wretchedly they
went by. But, as they went, another feeling, faint at first, an all but
imperceptible current, seemed to flow through the procession; and now
one, now another of the mourners would look wanly up, with cast-back
hood, as though listening; and anon all were listening on their way,
first in wonder, then in rapture; for the soul of their friend was
singing to them: they heard his voice, but clearer and more blithe than
they had ever known it--a voice etherealised by a triumph of joy that
was not yet for them to share. But presently the voice receded, its
echoes dying away into the sphere whence it came. It ceased; and the
mourners were left alone again with their sorrow, and passed on all
unsolaced, and drooping, weeping.

Soon after the Duke had begun to play, an invisible figure came and
stood by and listened; a frail man, dressed in the fashion of 1840; the
shade of none other than Frederic Chopin. Behind whom, a moment later,
came a woman of somewhat masculine aspect and dominant demeanour,
mounting guard over him, a