poke. "Who's this Brandeis?"

"I don't know. A new one. German, I guess. They say he's good.
Kreisler's the boy who can play for me, though."

The orchestra was seated now. Stock, the conductor, came out from
the little side door. Behind him walked Theodore. There was a little,
impersonal burst of applause. Stock mounted his conductor's platform and
glanced paternally down at Theodore, who stood at the left, violin and
bow in hand, bowing. The audience seemed to warm to his boyishness.
They applauded again, and he bowed in a little series of jerky bobs that
waggled his coat-tails. Heels close together, knees close together. A
German bow. And then a polite series of bobs addressed to Stock and his
orchestra. Stock's long, slim hands poised in air. His fingertips seemed
to draw from the men before him the first poignant strains of Theodore's
concerto. Theodore stood, slim and straight. Fanny's face, lifted toward
him, was a prayerful thing. Theodore suddenly jerked back the left lapel
of his coat in a little movement Fanny remembered as typical in his
boyish days, nuzzled his violin tenderly, and began to play.

It is the most excruciating of instruments, the violin, or the most
exquisite. I think Fanny actually heard very little of his playing. Her
hands were icy. Her cheeks were hot. The man before her was not Theodore
Brandeis, the violinist, but Teddy, the bright-haired, knickered
schoolboy who played to those people seated in the yellow wooden pews of
the temple in Winnebago. The years seemed to fade away. He crouched over
his violin to get the 'cello tones for which he was to become famous,
and it was the same hunched, almost awkward pose that the boy had used.
Fanny found herself watching his feet as his shifted his position. He
was nervous. And he was not taken out of himself. She knew that because
she saw the play of his muscles about the jaw-bone. It followed that he
was not playing his best. She could not tell that from listening to him.
Her music sense was dulled. She got it from these outward signs. The
woman next to her was reading a program absorbedly, turning the pages
regularly, and with care. Fanny could have killed her with her two
hands. She tried to listen detachedly. The music was familiar to her.
Theodore had played it for her, again and again. The last movement
had never failed to shake her emotionally. It was the glorious and
triumphant cry of a people tried and unafraid. She heard it now,
unmov