Then a murmur goes through the room: some one has fainted yonder on the stage--Nita! Her head falls forward. With difficulty Sophie holds her for one moment upright in her arms; then Nikolai springs to her help, carries out the unconscious woman. Sonia follows him.
An unpleasant excitement overpowers the audience; without entirely stopping, Lensky retards his strokes, coughs compassionately, looks short-sightedly squinting after his son. A splendid fellow! How easily he carries the dark form! Who was she? A slender, supple young body, evidently. Then he takes up the rhythm anew--the incident is forgotten.
IV.
Now the concert is over. After much that was beautiful and noble, in conclusion Lensky, in a superior, quite negligent manner, threw to the public a bravura piece by some unknown Russian composer, a wild, triumphal fanfare of neck-breaking double notes.
They hurrah, clap, are mad with enthusiasm, call him back again and again, but Lensky shows himself no more. He and his son roll along in a cab to the Hotel Westminster, where the great violinist, according to old custom, has his quarters.
The fever of his musical excitement still throbs in Lensky's every vein. His nerves are still quivering from the fierce, jubilant storm of applause. Something like an echo of the hand-clapping, which sounds quite like a hail-storm, yet rings in his ears.
Nikolai has no noise of applause in his ears, therefore he hears again and again the first sweet, dreamy bars of the "Légende." They form in his soul the musical background for a pale little face with large, gloomy eyes and melancholy, lovely mouth. How she had listened to his father's playing, quite with a kind of horror in her solemn gaze! He had never seen any one listen so. At every tone the expression of her face had changed. Were there, then, really people upon whom music could have such an effect?
And then how she had suddenly sunk down! Ah! how charming it was to take the slender, supple body in his arms, which scarcely felt the weight. Her head had rested so heavily and wearily on his shoulder; her hair, the silky, soft, golden-brown hair, had touched his cheek. He could not forget it; it seemed to him that he still held her; he felt the unconscious leaning of the warm young body against his breast. And this little face! How much more beautiful it had become when the forced self-restraint had left it. The cold, gloomy expression had vanished; it looked deathly sad, the poor, pale little face. But what an indescribable tenderness and goodness mingled with the sadness!
What might the great pain which lay hidden in her young heart be? Ah, to be able to console her! A foolish wish! Where were his thoughts wandering?
"Have you a match, Colia?" asks a rough voice near him.