Martin had been among the lions who were fed to-night at Lady Sunningdale’s, and had eaten of rich and slightly indeterminate food, for his hostess’s vagueness and volubility, like Karl’s love of form, found expression in the dinner. Afterwards he had taken up a strategic position near the head of the stairs when the meaner animals or belated lions began to arrive, in order to watch and wait for Stella’s entrance. Then as soon as her mother and Lady Sunningdale had retired into their corner, he had annexed her—with her complete assent—and plunged into discussions about affairs not in the least private. Had her mother overheard, she would, with her strong, practical common sense, have ordered the conversation to cease at once, so wanting in the right sort of intimacy would she have found it. And in so doing she would have made one of those mistakes which are so often and so inevitably committed by people of great common sense but no imagination, who cannot allow for the possible presence of romance in pursuits which they themselves consider prosaic. Had Martin been talking to her daughter about music, she would have considered that sufficiently promising to allow developments, for that was a thing very real to him,—his heart spoke. As it was, she would have considered that the conversation held not a germ of that disease of which she longed that Martin should sicken.

Lady Sunningdale, far less superficial really than{258} the other, not knowing that almost everything under the sun was rich with childish romance in Martin’s eyes, had hazarded the suggestion that they were talking about golf. This was practically correct, because they were talking about skating, and the two to her were indistinguishable,—she supposed you got runs at each,—being objectless exercises for the body. The moment you hunted or shot or played any game you entered that bracket. All these things were of the same genre, and quite unintelligible.

“But I can’t get my shoulders round,” said Stella. “It is no earthly use telling me that I must. They won’t go. Can you understand the meaning of those three simple words, or shall I try to express it differently? And if I try to make them get round I fall down.”

Martin frowned.

“Stella, you are really stupid about it,” he said,—they had long ago fallen into Christian names. “For the hundredth time you have to consider your foot as fixed. Then pivot round, head first,—then——“

Stella nodded.

“Yes, I understand that,” she said. “It is always head first with me,—on the ice.”

“You’re not being serious,” said Martin; “and if you can’t be serious about a game you can’t be serious about anything. That is a universal truth. I discovered it. What do you suppose matters to me most in my life? Music? Not at all. Get along with you, you silly thing. But, oh, if any one would teach me to do back brackets not rather clean, but quite clean. I dreamed I did one once, and I awoke sobbing loudly from sheer happiness. I would sign a pledge never to{259} touch tobacco or a piano again, if I could do that. That’s my real state of mind. Now, will you skate to-morrow at Prince’s? I can be there at ten for an hour.”

“Considering I am always there at half-past nine,” remarked Stella, “I don’t think you need ask. And yet you say I am not serious. Oh, Martin, why is it that one really only wants to do the things one can’t do?”

“You can if you want enough,” said he. “The deuce is that one can’t always want enough.”

“I don’t believe that,” said she promptly,—Lady Monica would have stayed her devastating hand, if she had heard this,—“I want lots of things as much as I possibly can.”

“But perhaps even that isn’t enough. What, for instance?”

Stella could not help a momentary lifting of her eyes to his.

“Why, to skate, silly,” she said. “Yes, I’ll be there by ten, and so be punctual. I will consider my foot whatever you wish, and I’ll fall down as often as you think necessary. But don’t be unkind at once when you pick me up, and tell me I was too much on my heel, or anything of that sort. Wait till the first agony is over. I attend best when the pain is beginning to pass off.”

“Well, I only tell you to save trouble in the future,” said he.

“I know, but give me a moment. Do you care about the future much, by the way? I don’t. Give me the immediate present. To think much about the future is a sign of age. No one begins to care about the future{260} until he is too old to have any. Besides, it implies that the present has ceased to be absorbing.”

Martin pondered this.

“Oh, no; I don’t think that is so at all.”

Stella laughed.

“You never, by any chance, agree with a word I say,” she remarked.

“Well, you haven’t agreed with me since August,” he said. “I made a note of it. But that is why we have no stupid pauses. All conversation runs dry in two minutes if one agrees with the other person. But what you say about age really isn’t so. Look at Karl Rusoff or Lady Sunningdale. They both live intensely in the present.”

“Ah, you are shallow,” she said. “Years have got nothing whatever to do with age. That is the most superficial view. People of ninety die young, people of twenty die of senile decay.”

Martin stretched his trouser over his crossed knee.

“I am a hundred and eleven,” he said, “and whiles—don’t you hate the Scotch—and whiles I am about twelve in an Eton collar.”

“Yes, loathe them, laddie. Hoots! That is what is so maddening about you. Half the time I think I am talking to my great-uncle, and the rest of it to my little nephew up from the country.”

“Is he a nice boy?” asked Martin. “Or do you like your great-uncle best?”

“I don’t like either at all, thank you. You are always being far too wise or far too young. As a man of a hundred, how can you play silly games with such enthusiasm? And as a boy of twelve, how can you play the piano as you do?”{261}

“It is because I am so extremely gifted,” said Martin, so gravely and naturally that for an appreciable moment she stared.

“Ah! Don’t you find it an awful bore?” she asked.

“Dreadful. I can’t really take any pleasure in anything, owing to the sense of responsibility which my talents bring to me.”

Stella broke down and laughed. At gravity he always beat her completely. At which period in their conversation Lord Sunningdale did as he was ordered, and, taking him firmly by the arm, led him to the piano.

 

Karl was always most assiduous in his attendance at houses where Martin played, and he was here to-night. His object was certainly not to flatter or encourage his pupil, for often and often, when Martin had played in his presence the night before, he found but a growling reception waiting for him at his next lesson.

“You played well enough for them,” Karl would say; “I grant you that. Any bungling would do for them. But to play ‘well enough for them’ is damnation.”

“But it did,” Martin would argue. “I did not want to play at all; but one can’t say no. At least I can’t. I was not playing for you.”

“Then you should not have played at all. If you play often enough in a second-rate manner, you will soon become second-rate.”

But to-night Martin never suggested the second-rate even to his exacting master. In a sort of boyish protestation at the strictures he had undergone last night concerning the last of the Noveletten, he played it{262} again now. Certainly to-night there was no note of stodginess there; the varied, crisp, masterful moods of the music rang extraordinarily true. Half way through Karl turned to Lady Sunningdale, who was sitting next him.

“How has he spent his day?” he asked, suddenly.

“Skating, I think. He skated all morning, and was late for lunch, and he went back to Prince’s afterwards. He is terribly idle, is he not? Pray don’t interrupt, Monsieur Rusoff. I never can feel as if I hear a note at all unless I hear them all. Who said that? You, I think. So true. And have you heard his piece on me? He must play it. Delicious this is, isn’t it? I learned it when I was a child. Tum-tum. There is the tune again.”

“But with whom did he skate, my dear lady?” asked Karl. There had been a good many notes missed by now.

Lady Sunningdale gasped.

“Oh, Monsieur Rusoff, how clever of you!” she said. “You are really clairvoyant. So is my maid,—the one like a murderess. Do you know her? No; how should you. Martin was skating with Stella Plympton. And that is important, is it? Don’t tell her mother. She is such a fool, and also she has been trying to pump me. You see, it was I who brought them together. So suitable. I feel dreadfully responsible——“

At this point the Novelette ended, and Lady Sunningdale clapped her hands in a perfunctory manner.

“Too heavenly, monster,” she said. “Now play Tum-te-tum. Yes, that one. And is he really going to marry her?” she continued to Karl. “I love being{263} pumped, if I know it. Dear Monica, she pumps like a fire-engine. There is no possibility of mistake. Now, while he is playing this, do tell me all you know.”

“My dear lady, you are building on no foundation,” said Karl. “All I know is that he played that to me last night, and played it abominably. To-night he has played it—well, you have heard. And, psychologically, I should like to know what has occurred in the interval.”

“Was his playing of it just now very wonderful?” she asked.

“Yes; one might venture to say that. And as he has been skating all day, presumably he has not thought much about it. His thinking perhaps has been done for him. And who is Stella Plympton? Wife or maid?”

Lady Sunningdale gave a little shriek of laughter. Really people who lived out of the world were much more amusing than those who lived in it. Those who lived in it, it is true, always believed the worst in the absence of definite knowledge; the others, however, made far more startling suggestions.

“Next but two on your right,” she whispered. “Dear Monica will have............