“Martin, play the Brahms Variations,” and the demand had led to his word of warning. But warning was not needed. If the piece was going to take an hour, no one would have complained. Frank, knowing the acoustic properties of the room better than Lady Sunningdale, had placed himself in the seat of the second window, with Karl Rusoff beside him. He had himself not felt the slightest hesitation in asking the great pianist to listen to the recital of this wonderful débutant, and Karl’s absolute silence at the end of the Variations convinced him that he had been right. And as the last glorious fantasy vibrated and died on the air, while the crowd burst gloves in applause, he turned to him. “Well?” he said. Karl Rusoff nodded his great grey head up and down once or twice. “Ah, my dear friend,” he said, “I usually think it very clever to unearth a genius. But with your genius it needed no cleverness. Shall I tell you what will happen? We,--the pianists, I mean,--with our nimble professional fingers will in a year’s time be fighting each other for seats at his concerts, if he is kind enough to give any. Let him give one, however, just to show us, to--yes, I mean it--to let us weep over our own deficiencies. Fire, my God, what fire! But I hope he won’t give many. He ought--I only say he ought--to be too busy with his own work. As regards his piano-playing, of course you were right. Who has taught him? Nobody, I tell you. How can you teach _that_? Will I teach him? Certainly I will, as Molière’s housemaid taught her master. He does a hundred things quite wrong. But--ah, a big but!” Martin had risen and bowed his thanks to the storm of applause, but his eye sought the corner where Karl Rusoff sat, with his great grey, leonine head and his grey eyes gleaming through his spectacles. The latter rose and came up the gangway between the chairs and the wall towards him and shook hands with him. “Mr. Challoner,” he said, “that was a great treat to me. Thank you. You can play what is really difficult, magnificently. Now, my dear young man, I want to ask you a great favour. Attempt something much more difficult,--that is to say, something where the notes are quite easy, but where the rest, which is everything, must be a poem. Play, if you happen to know it--really know it, I mean--Chopin’s fifteenth prelude, the rain on the roof.” Martin looked round the room, but nobody had moved from his seat, except Frank, who had followed Monsieur Rusoff. “Yes, I know it,” he said. “But are you sure you really want me to play again?” he asked, with the charming horror that a nice boy has of being a bore. “Are you sure they aren’t sick of me?” “No, do play again, Martin, if you will,” said Frank, who had followed Karl. “We can really stand a little more.” “I have asked him to play the fifteenth prelude,” said Rusoff. “Ah, yes, do,” said Frank.