The lad sprang to his feet. Constance laid hold on him. ‘Listen, dear Otto—listen a moment!’ She held him fast, and breathing deep, he listened. The very melody he had just been humming rang out, from the same distant point; now pealing through the little house in a rich plenitude of sound, now delicate and plaintive as the chant of nuns in a quiet church, and finally crashing to a defiant and glorious close. ‘What is it?’ he said, very pale, looking at her almost threateningly. ‘What have you been doing?’ ‘It’s our gift—our surprise—dear Otto!’ ‘Where is it? Let me go.’ ‘No!—sit down and listen! Let me listen with you. I’ve not heard it before! Mr. Falloden and I have been preparing it for months. Isn’t it wonderful! Oh, dear Otto!—if you only like it!’ He sat down trembling, and hand in hand they listened. The ‘Fantasia’ ran on, dealing with song after song, now simply, now with rich embroidery and caprice. ‘Who is it playing?’ said Otto, in a whisper. ‘It _was_ Paderewski!’ said Constance between laughing and crying. ‘Oh, Otto, everybody’s been at work for it!—everybody was so marvellously keen!’ ‘In Paris?’ ‘Yes—all your old friends—your teachers—and many others.’ She ran through the names. Otto choked. He knew them all, and some of them were among the most illustrious in French music. But while Connie was speaking the stream of sound in the distance sank into gentleness, and in the silence a small voice arose, naïvely, pastorally sweet, like the Shepherd’s Song in ‘Tristan.’ Otto buried his face in his hands. It was the ‘Heynal,’ the watchman’s horn-song from the towers of Panna Marya. Once given, a magician caught it, played with it, pursued it, juggled with it, through a series of variations till, finally, a grave and beautiful modulation led back to the noble dirge of the beginning. ‘I know who wrote that!—who must have written it!’ said Otto, looking up. He named a French name. ‘I worked with him at the Conservatoire for a year.’ Constance nodded. ‘He did it for you,’ she said, her eyes full of tears. ‘He said you were the best pupil he ever had.’ The door opened, and Mrs. Mulholland’s grizzled head appeared, with Falloden and Sorell behind. ‘Otto!’ said Mrs. Mulholland, softly. He understood that she called him, and he went with her in bewilderment, along the passage to the studio. Falloden came into the sitting-room and shut the door. ‘Did he like it?’ he asked, in a low voice, in which there was neither pleasure nor triumph. Connie, who was still sitting on the stool by the fire with her face turned away, looked up. ‘Oh yes, yes!’ she said in a kind of desperation, wringing her hands; ‘but why are some pleasures worse than pain—much worse?’ Falloden came up to her, and stood silently, his eyes on hers. ‘You see—’ she went on, dashing tears away—‘It is not _his_ work—_his_ playing. It can’t do anything—can it?—for his poor starved _self_.’