was freshly polished, chairs and benches
arranged, and a row of little flags strung across the ceiling--they flew
and jigged in the draught with all the enthusiasm of family washing. It
was arranged that I should sit beside Frau Godowska, and that the Herr
Professor and Sonia should join us when their share of the concert was
over.

"That will make you feel quite one of the performers," said the Herr
Professor genially. "It is a great pity that the English nation is
so unmusical. Never mind! To-night you shall hear something--we have
discovered a nest of talent during the rehearsals."

"What do you intend to recite, Fraulein Sonia?"

She shook back her hair. "I never know until the last moment. When I
come on the stage I wait for one moment and then I have the sensation as
though something struck me here,"--she placed her hand upon her collar
brooch--"and... words come!"

"Bend down a moment," whispered her mother. "Sonia, love, your skirt
safety-pin is showing at the back. Shall I come outside and fasten it
properly for you, or will you do it yourself?"

"Oh, mamma, please don't say such things," Sonia flushed and grew very
angry. "You know how sensitive I am to the slightest unsympathetic
impression at a time like this... I would rather my skirt dropped off my
body--"

"Sonia--my heart!"

A bell tinkled.

The waiter came in and opened the piano. In the heated excitement of the
moment he entirely forgot what was fitting, and flicked the keys with
the grimy table napkin he carried over his arm. The Frau Oberlehrer
tripped on the platform followed by a very young gentleman, who blew
his nose twice before he hurled his handkerchief into the bosom of the
piano.

"Yes, I know you have no love for me, And no forget-me-not.
No love, no heart, and no forget-me-not."

sang the Frau Oberlehrer, in a voice that seemed to issue from her
forgotten thimble and have nothing to do with her.

"Ach, how sweet, how delicate," we cried, clapping her soothingly. She
bowed as though to say, "Yes, isn't it?" and retired, the very young
gentleman dodging her train and scowling.

The piano was closed, an arm-chair was placed in the centre of the
platform. Fraulein Sonia drifted towards it. A breathless pause. Then,
presumably, the winged shaft struck her collar brooch. She implored
us not to go into the woods in trained dresses, but rather as lightly
draped as possible, and bed with her among the pine needles. Her loud,
slig