r day by parents who had been told that they had brought forth a
genius. He half-dropped into his seat, glanced wearily about him, then
let his eyes sink expressionless on the keyboard and his hands fall flat
on his knees, nerveless, heavy, apathetic.

The orchestra leader poised his baton and the two-score strings under
his command swung into a noble andante. The artist at the piano slowly
raised his eyes to a level with the top of his instrument, his lips just
parted as if in halting wonder at something he alone in the great hall
could see, the hands made as if to lift themselves from his knees. "Look
at his face," my neighbour said. I looked and saw that the dull mask was
slightly changing, that some emotion at last was rising to the surface
of that stolid countenance, striking its cloudy aspect with the first
anticipations of breaking light. Would that cloud dissolve? Would the
light completely break and irradiate player, piano, and audience, all
equally keyed up to the delayed climax? Would those massive hands rise
slowly, slowly, and hanging aloft an instant crash down in a rage of
harmony upon keyboard and auditors' hearts? No. The clouds once more
swept over that massive face. The player moistened his lips with his
tongue, half-turned on his chair, and slowly swept the hall with an
indifferent, almost a disdainful eye. Then he sank into his former
lassitude. His hands dropped to his side without striking the keys.
Evidently the time had not come. The violins in the orchestra sang on.

My neighbour was not the only one to fall under the spell of such
masterly musicianship. Twenty-four ladies in the parquette shrank back
into their seats with a half-sob of brimming emotion, and implored their
escorts to look at the artist's face. Eleven ladies in the lower boxes
interrupted their conversation to remark that it was wonderful what soul
those Slavs managed to put into their playing. In the upper balconies
listeners strained forward in their seats so that from below it seemed
as if they were about to precipitate themselves over the railings. What
expert opinion had described as the sublimest ten minutes in the great
pianist's greatest concerto had just begun. The conductor slightly
raised himself on his toes. Instantly through the weaving of the violins
the voices of the wood instruments began to break out. The contest
between the two came quickly to its climax. The strings were forced back
and back, wailing an ineffe