hearsals, to indicate those
passages where some body of instruments were weak, or needed special
watching, his heart began to throb, unsteadily. Second by second his
desperate unfamiliarity with the whole thing, his utter ignorance of the
tone and temper of the men he was to conduct--their respective abilities
and faults--were revealing themselves to him. And, presently, he made
for Anton, with a hoarse request that a few of the marks in the first
movement, at least, be explained to him. Rubinstein was all courtesy,
all geniality, all encouragement. But he overdid his part just enough to
allow the first quick stab of doubt--or of understanding--to pierce the
poor boy's rapidly crumbling barrier of confidence. When, at last, the
director was called to his waiting audience, Ivan sat on, like a stone,
his eyes riveted on the first page of the score,--which might have
contained pictures of butterflies upon it for all he knew. His heart was
palpitating like a woman's. His head was in a sick whirl. Then, in the
horrid silence in which he sat, a voice from out of the far away
addressed him:

"Herr Gregoriev, they are ready for you!"

Without a word, his face set, his eyes brilliant, he rose, mechanically,
gave his score into the hands of the librarian, who, for ten minutes,
had been nervously awaiting it, and then walked woodenly up the passage
to the wings. Here somebody grasped his arm and held him for an instant,
whispering something unintelligible into his ears. Some seconds, or
minutes, or hours, after this, there struck into his eyes the white
glare of the footlights. Then a thin sprinkling of applause rose to meet
his slight, mechanical bow; and, at the same instant, he perceived,
sitting in the right-hand stage-box in the first tier, the form of his
father: his white face barred by the black line of his mustache; the
frame of hair above, all iron gray streaked with white. Beyond this
figure rose a dead wall of black and colored patch-work emphasized by
featureless white splashes; the whole punctuated, here and there, with
gleams of light betokening jewels.

The hand-clapping died away. Ivan turned, mounted his desk, and lifted
the black baton. He rapped, once, and beheld sixty pairs of gleaming
eyes raised to him: rapped twice, and saw thirty bows lifted in air.
Then he glanced at the first, open page of his score.--It was simply a
horrible, gray blur, from which not a note, not a mark, would detach
itself.--And he