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cess, who declined it with:
‘Oh, please, no! Why should you? It doesn’t matter in the
least where I sit.’ And deliberately picking out, so as the bet-
ter to display the simplicity of a really great lady, a low seat
without a back: ‘There now, that hassock, that’s all I want.
It will make me keep my back straight. Oh! Good heavens,
I’m making a noise again; they’ll be telling you to have me
‘chucked out’.’
Meanwhile, the pianist having doubled his speed, the
emotion of the music-lovers was reaching its climax, a ser-
vant was handing refreshments about on a salver, and was
making the spoons rattle, and, as on every other ‘party-
night’, Mme. de Saint-Euverte was making signs to him,
which he never saw, to leave the room. A recent bride, who
had been told that a young woman ought never to appear
bored, was smiling vigorously, trying to catch her host-
ess’s eye so as to flash a token of her gratitude for the other’s
having ‘thought of her’ in connection with so delightful an
entertainment. And yet, although she remained more calm
than Mme. de Franquetot, it was not without some uneasi-
ness that she followed the flying fingers; what alarmed her
being not the pianist’s fate but the piano’s, on which a light-
ed candle, jumping at each fortissimo, threatened, if not to
set its shade on fire, at least to spill wax upon the ebony. At
last she could contain herself no longer, and, running up the
two steps of the platform on which the piano stood, flung
herself on the candle to adjust its sconce. But scarcely had
her hand come within reach of it when, on a final chord, the
piece finished, and the pianist rose to his feet. Neverthe-

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