; her eyelids were red,
for she had been crying.

"Take good care of the little _Fraeulein_," said Von Barwig as he handed
her over to the maid. It was long past her bedtime, and the little
child had almost fallen asleep in her father's arms.

"Let me kiss her just once more; I won't wake her up!"

The girl burst into tears as Von Barwig bent over the child, kissing
her tenderly; then she hurried into the next room with her precious
charge.

"She knows?" inquired Poons.

"Yes," nodded Von Barwig; and then, with a sigh, "She knows."

Five minutes later, Von Barwig, accompanied by Poons, left the house
and hurriedly took a cab to the concert hall.

Chapter Three

It was noticed by more than one member of the Leipsic Philharmonic
Orchestra that Herr Director Von Barwig was in unusually high spirits
that evening. Many attributed it to the fact that he was nervous because
of the first production of his new symphony. Karlschmidt hinted to his
deskmate that Von Barwig was nervous and was trying to conceal it by
pretending to be delighted with everything and everybody. This was
probably true in a measure; at all events, when he came into the artists'
room at the Gewandhaus at about five minutes to eight, he shook hands
with everybody, joked with his men, and talked almost incessantly, as if
he wanted to keep at high pressure. Poons watched him closely. Von
Barwig was unusually pale, and as he slapped his concert meister on the
back Poons noticed that, though his face wore a smile, his lips quivered.

"For heaven's sake," he heard him say to the leader of the second
violins, "don't play the _pizzicato_ in the third movement as if you were
picking up eggs!" Poons rejoiced that his friend could forget so easily.

It was, however, when Von Barwig walked out on the platform to the dais,
bowed to the immense audience, and turned to his men, that the deadly
pallor of his face was most apparent. Some of the audience noticed it as
he acknowledged the applause he received. There was not a tremor of hand
or muscle, not an undecided movement; merely a deadly pallor of
countenance as if he no longer had blood in his veins, but ice. The men
felt the absence of the compelling force that always emanated from him,
that seemed to ooze from his baton; that psychic something that compelled
the player to feel as his director felt--the force we call magnetism.
The firmness of mouth showed that the determination to dominate