e
room.

Still the Maestro seemed ill at ease. Tina, finding that her sallies
were received with a morose indifference, relapsed into silence, and sat
furtively glancing at her companion, with a pouting, disconsolate air
which, it might have been thought, would have been found irresistible
even by an ascetic.

At last the Maestro, after several futile attempts, and with an awkward
and embarrassed air, began:

"I have been thinking, Signora," he said, "over my future plans, and I
have resolved not to try to get my music performed, at present at any
rate, in any great city. I am old and want rest. I propose to travel
for a few months. It will therefore not be necessary to take you from
Vienna."

His manner was so constrained, and his resolution so unexpected, that
the girl looked at him with perplexity. It was, of course, impossible
for her, in her ignorance, to perceive that what was troubling the
Maestro was the difficulty of concealing from himself that he had
accepted a bribe to desert his art and his friend.

"Maestro," she said at last, "what can you mean?--you to whom it has
been given to achieve such a success? How can you talk of rest? What
rest can be more perfect than to listen to your own wonderful music? To
see, to feel, the power of your glorious art over others, over
yourself?"

The Maestro hesitated and floundered worse than before. He was, as he
had said himself, when under the influence of as noble feeling as he was
capable of, a bad artist; but he had sufficient of the true instinct to
be conscious of his bad work. He was ashamed of himself and of his
_faineantise_. He made a bungling business of it all round.

He had, before the Prince had made his offer, begun to regret that in a
moment of irritation he had been so precipitate in insisting upon
leaving Vienna; but now that an offer of freedom, of a sojourn in Paris,
of independent means, was made him, the proposal was too attractive to
be declined. He felt, beside, that there was so much truth in the
Prince's bitter phrase--when he was independent of his music, he felt
certain that his music would be a great success.

"It will be better so, Faustina," he said at last; "you will be happier
here. You will have plenty to sing, plenty to teach you. The Prince will
be pleased."

She was still looking at him wonderingly, but a smile was slowly growing
in her eyes. She judged him by a nature as generous and unselfish as his
was paltry and mean.