hat performance;
you are all very kind and considerate; it is easy to see that none of
you will have to stay in bed, for a week."

This little scene, which was re-enacted as often as the young pianist
sat down to play, never failed to delight the audience, as though
each of them were witnessing it for the first time, as a proof of the
seductive originality of the 'Mistress' as she was styled, and of the
acute sensitiveness of her musical 'ear.' Those nearest to her would
attract the attention of the rest, who were smoking or playing cards at
the other end of the room, by their cries of 'Hear, hear!' which, as
in Parliamentary debates, shewed that something worth listening to was
being said. And next day they would commiserate with those who had
been prevented from coming that evening, and would assure them that the
'little scene' had never been so amusingly done.

"Well, all right, then," said M. Verdurin, "he can play just the
andante."

"Just the _andante_! How you do go on," cried his wife. "As if it
weren't 'just the _andante_' that breaks every bone in my body. The
'Master' is really too priceless! Just as though, 'in the Ninth,' he
said 'we need only have the _finale_,' or 'just the overture' of the
_Meistersinger_."

The Doctor, however, urged Mme. Verdurin to let the pianist play,
not because he supposed her to be malingering when she spoke of the
distressing effects that music always had upon her, for he recognised
the existence of certain neurasthenic states--but from his habit, common
to many doctors, of at once relaxing the strict letter of a prescription
as soon as it appeared to jeopardise, what seemed to him far more
important, the success of some social gathering at which he was present,
and of which the patient whom he had urged for once to forget her
dyspepsia or headache formed an essential factor.

"You won't be ill this time, you'll find," he told her, seeking at the
same time to subdue her mind by the magnetism of his gaze. "And, if you
are ill, we will cure you."

"Will you, really?" Mme. Verdurin spoke as though, with so great a
favour in store for her, there was nothing for it but to capitulate.
Perhaps, too, by dint of saying that she was going to be ill, she had
worked herself into a state in which she forgot, occasionally, that it
was all only a 'little scene,' and regarded things, quite sincerely,
from an invalid's point of view. For it may often be remarked that
invalids grow weary