major. Mentally to be stretched on a kind of rack, and, at the same
time, to be forced to reiterate the empty rhetoric of this music! From
this time forward, he could not hear the name of Mendelssohn without a
shiver of repugnance. How he wished now, that he had been content with
the bare sincerity of Beethoven, who at least said no note more than he
had to say.

One day, towards the end of November, he was working with even greater
distaste than usual. Finally, in exasperation, he flapped the music to,
shut the piano, and went out. A stroll along the muddy little railed-in
river brought him to the PLEISSENBURG, and from there he crossed the
KONIGSPLATZ to the BRUDERSTRASSE. He had not come out with the
intention of going to Louise, but, although it was barely four o'clock,
the afternoon was drawing in; an interminable evening had to be got
through. He had been walking at haphazard, and without relish; now his
pace grew brisker. Having reached the house, he sprang nimbly up the
stairs, and was about to insert his key in the little door in the wall,
when he was arrested by a muffled sound of voices. Louise was talking
to some one, and, at the noise he made outside, she raised her
voice--purposely, no doubt. He could not hear what was being said, but
the second voice was a man's. For a minute he stood, with his key
suspended, straining his cars; then, afraid of being caught, he went
downstairs again, where he hung about, between stair and street-door,
in order that anyone who came down would be forced to pass him. At the
end of five minutes, however, his patience was spent: he remembered,
too, that the person might be as likely to go up as down. He mounted
the stairs again, rang the bell, and had himself admitted by the
landlady.

He thought she looked significantly at him as, with her usual pantomime
of winks and signs, she whispered to him that a gentleman was with
Fraulein--EIN SCHONER JUNGER MANN! Maurice pushed her aside, and opened
the sitting-room door. Two heads turned at his entrance.

On the sofa, beside Louise, sat Herries, the ruddy little student of
medicine with whom she had danced so often at the ball. He sat there,
smiling and dapper, balancing his hard round hat on his knee, and
holding gloves in his hand.

Louise looked the more untidy by contrast: as usual, her hair was half
uncoiled. Maurice saw this in a flash, saw also the look of annoyance
that crossed her face at his unceremonious entry. She