And finally Marya looked back at Palla.

"May Mr. Tchernov play for us?" asked Palla, smiling, as though some
vague authority in the matter were vested in this young girl with the
tiger-hair.

Her eyes closed indolently, and opened again as though digesting the
subtlety: then, disdainfully accepting the assumption: "Oh, Vanya,"
she called out carelessly, "play a little for us."

The handsome youth bowed in his absent, courteous way. There was
about him a simplicity entirely winning as he seated himself at the
piano.

But his playing revealed a maturity and nobility of mind scarcely
expected of such gentleness and youth.

Never had Palla heard Beethoven until that moment.

He did not drift. There was no caprice to offend when he turned with
courtly logic from one great master to another.

Only when Estridge asked for something "typically Russian" did the
charming dignity of the sequence break. Vanya laughed and looked at
Marya Lanois:

"That means you must sing," he said.

She sang, resting where she was among the silken cushions;--the song,
one of those epics of ancient Moscow, lauded Ivan IV. and the taking
of Kazan.

The music was bizarre; the girl's voice bewitching; and though the
song was of the _Beliny_, it had been made into brief couplets, and it
ended very quickly.

Laughing at the applause, she sang a song of the _Skomorokhi_; then a
cradle song, infinitely tender and strange, built upon the Chinese
scale; and another--a Cossack song--built, also, upon the pentatonic
scale.

Discussions intruded then; the diversion ended the music.

Palla presently rose, spoke to Vanya and Estridge, and came over to
where Jim Shotwell sat beside Marya.

Interrupted, they both looked up, and Jim rose as Estridge also
presented himself to Marya.

Palla said: "If you will take me out, Jim, we can show everybody the
way." And to Marya: "Just a little supper, you know--but the dining
room is below."

* * * * *

Her pretty drawing-room was only partly furnished--an expensive but
genuine set of old Aubusson being her limit for the time.

But beyond, in the rear, the little glass doors opened on a charming
dining-room, the old Georgian mahogany of which was faded to a golden
hue. Curtains, too, were golden shot with palest mauve; and two
Imperial Chinese panels of ancient silk, miraculously embroidered and
set with rainbow Ho-ho birds, were the only hangings on the