“Well?” questioned Hetzel.
“Well, you ought to call on Mrs. Berle, anyway, you know. She has been so polite and kind, and has asked you to so often, that really it’s no more than right that you should show her some little attention. Why not improve this occasion?”
“Oh,” said Hetzel, yawning, “I’m tired. I prefer to stay home this afternoon.”
“Nonsense. You’re simply lazy. It’s—it’s positively a matter of duty, Hetz.”
“Well, you have so frequently asserted that I have no sense of duty, I’m trying to live up to your conception of me.”
After a minute of silence, “The fact of the matter is,” ventured Arthur, “that I too owe Mrs. Berle a visit, and—and won’t you go down with me, as a favor?”
“Oh, if you put it on that ground, it’s another question. As a favor to you, I consent to be dragged out.”
“Hurrah!” cried Arthur, casting off the mask of indifference that he had thus far clumsily worn. “I’ll go change my coat, and come back in an instant. Wasn’t I lucky to be posted there by the window at the moment of their exit? At last we shall see her with our own eyes.”
Ere a great while, Mrs. Berle’s maid-servant ushered them into Mrs. Berle’s drawing-room.
Mrs. Lehmyl was at the piano—playing, not singing. Arthur enjoyed a fine view of her back. My meaning is literal, when I say “enjoyed.” Impatient though he was to see her face, he took an indescribable pleasure in watching her back sway to and fro, as her fingers raced up and down the keyboard. Its contour was refined and symmetrical. Its undulations lent stress to the music, and denoted fervor on the part of the executant. Arthur can’t tell what she was playing. It was something of Rubenstein’s, the title of which escapes him—something, he says, as vigorous as a whirlwind—a bewitching melody sounding above a tempest of harmony—it was the restless, tumultuous, barbaric Rubenstein at his best.