long ages had gone to the building up of each human consciousness,
re-entered and possessed it; the fragrance of blossoming trees, the
farewell gaze of dying eyes, the speechless smile of lovers, ancestral
memories of Spring-times, loves, and partings, evoked by this poignant
lure from dim realms of sub-consciousness, like subterranean rivers
rising through creaks and crannies towards the lifted wand of the
diviner. It seemed the quintessence of human experience, the ecstasy of
perfect and enfranchising sorrow, distilled from the shackling,
smirching half-sorrows of actual life. Some of the listening faces
smiled; some were sodden, stupefied rather than enlightened; some showed
a sensual rudimentary gratification; some, lapped in the tide, yet
unaware of its significance, were merely silly. But no Orpheus, wildly
harping through the woods, ever led more enthralled and subjugated
listeners.

Gregory Jardine's face was neither sodden nor silly nor sensual; but it
did not wear the enchanted look of the true votary. Instinctively this
young man, though it was emotion that he found in music, resisted any
too obvious assault upon his feelings, taking refuge in irony from their
force when roused. For the form of music, and its intellectual content,
he had little appreciation, and he was thus the more exposed to its
emotional appeal; but his intuition of the source and significance of
the appeal remained singularly just and accurate. He could not now have
analysed his sense of protest and dissatisfaction; yet, while the charm
grasped and encircled him, making him, as he said to himself,
idiotically grovel or inanely soar, he repelled the poignant sweetness
and the thrills that went through him were thrills of a half-unwilling
joy.

He sat straightly, his arms folded, his head bent as he twisted the end
of his moustache, his eye fixed on the great musician; and he wondered
what was the matter with him, or with her. It was as if he couldn't get
at the music. Something interfered, something exquisite yet ambiguous,
alluring yet never satisfying.

His glance fell presently from the pianist's drooping head to the face
of the _protegee_, and the contrast between what was expressed by this
young person's gaze and attitude and what he was himself feeling again
drew his attention to her. No grovelling and no soaring was here, but an
elation almost stern, a brooding concentration almost maternal, a
dedicated power. Madame Okraska, h