to come up for the
concert, feeling that the excitement would be too much for her; but
Alma suspected another reason.

She had not asked her husband whether he meant to have a seat in
Prince's Hall this afternoon; she still waited for him to speak about
it. After breakfast he asked her when she would start for town. At
noon, she replied. Every arrangement had been completed; it would be
enough if she reached the Hall half an hour before the time of the
recital, and after a light luncheon at a neighbouring restaurant.

'Then we may as well go together,' said her husband.

'You mean to come, then?' she asked dreamily.

'I shall go in at the last moment--a seat at the back.'

Anything but inclined for conversation, Alma acquiesced. For the next
hour or two she kept in solitude, occasionally touching her violin, but
always recurring to an absent mood, a troubled reverie. She could not
fix her thoughts upon the trial that was before her. In a vague way she
feared it; but another fear, at times amounting to dread, dimmed the
day's event into insignificance. The morning's newspapers were before
her, sent, no doubt, by Dymes's direction, and she mused over the
eye-attracting announcements of her debut. 'Mrs. Harvey Rolfe's First
Violin Recital, Prince's Hall, this afternoon, at 3.' It gave her no
more gratification than if the name had been that of a stranger.

The world had grown as unreal as a nightmare. People came before her
mind, people the most intimately known, and she seemed but faintly to
recognise them. They were all so much changed since yesterday. Their
relations to each other and to her were altered, confused. Scarce one
of them she could regard without apprehension or perplexity.

What faces would show before her when she advanced upon the platform?
Would she behold Sibyl, or Hugh Carnaby, or Cyrus Redgrave? Their
presence would all but convince her that she had passed some hours of
yesterday in delirium. They might be present; for was not she--she
herself--about to step forward and play in public? Their absence--what
would it mean? Where were they at this moment? What had happened in the
life of each since last she saw them?

When it was time to begin to dress, she undertook the task with effort,
with repugnance. She would have chosen to sit here, in a drowsy
idleness, and let the hours go by. On her table stood the little vial
with its draught of oblivion. Oh to drink of it again, and to lay her
head up