es, some one else made his appearance on the
Haid, and the very person who was best fitted to give information about
Barbara--her teacher, Feys, who had sought Gombert, his famous Brussels
companion in art, and was just taking him to a rehearsal of the Convivium
musicum. At this meeting the leader of the boy choir, in spite of his
pleasure at seeing his valued countryman and companion in art, showed far
less patience than before, for, after the first greeting, he at once
asked Feys what he thought of his pupil Barbara. The answer was so
favourable that Appenzelder eagerly accepted the invitation to attend the
rehearsal also. So the four fellow-artists crossed the Haidplatz
together, and Maestro Gombert was obliged to remind his colleague of the
boy choir that people who occupied the conductor's desk forgot to run on
a wager.

Wolf's legs were by no means so long as those of the tall, broad
musician, yet, in his joyous excitement, it was an easy matter to keep
pace with him. In the happy consciousness of meriting the gratitude of
the woman whom he loved, he gazed toward the New Scales, the large
building beneath whose roof she whose image filled his heart and mind
must already have found shelter.

Did she see him coming? Did she suspect who his companions were, and what
awaited her through them?

Yet, sharply as he watched for her, he could discover no sign of her fair
head behind any of the windows.

Yet Barbara, from the little room where the singers laid aside their
cloaks and wraps, had seen Wolf, with her singing master Feys and two
other gentlemen, coming toward the New Scales, and correctly guessed the
names of the slender, shorter stranger in the sable-trimmed mantle and
the big, broad-shouldered, bearded one who accompanied her friend. Wolf
had described them both, and a presentiment told her that something great
awaited her through them.

Gombert was the composer of the bird-song, and, as she remembered how the
refrain of this composition had affected Wolf the day before, she heard
the door close behind the group.

Then the desire to please, which had never left her since she earned the
first applause, seized upon her more fiercely than ever.

Of what consequence were the listeners before whom she had hitherto sung
compared with those whose footsteps were now echoing on the lowest
stairs? And, half animated by an overpowering secret impulse, she sang
the refrain "Car la saison est bonne" aloud while pas