In the meantime Claude de Chauxville had gently led the Countess Lanovitch to invite him to stay to dinner. He accepted the invitation with becoming reluctance, and returned to the Hotel de Berlin, where he was staying, in order to dress. He was fully alive to the expediency of striking while the iron is hot--more especially where women are concerned. Moreover, his knowledge of the countess led him to fear that she would soon tire of his society. This lady had a lamentable facility for getting to the bottom of her friends' powers of entertainment within a few days. It was De Chauxville's intention to make secure his invitation to Thors, and then to absent himself from the countess. At dinner he made himself vastly agreeable, recounting many anecdotes fresh from Paris, which duly amused the Countess Lanovitch, and somewhat shocked Catrina, who was not advanced or inclined to advance. After dinner the guest asked Mlle. Catrina to play. He opened the grand piano in the inner drawing-room with such gallantry and effusion that the sanguine countess, post-prandially somnolescent in her luxurious chair, began rehearsing different modes of mentioning her son-in-law, the baron. "Yes," she muttered to herself, "and Catrina is plain--terribly plain." Thereupon she fell asleep. De Chauxville had a good memory, and was, moreover, a good and capable liar. So Catrina did not find out that he knew nothing whatever of music. He watched the plain face as the music rose and fell, himself impervious to its transcendent tones. With practised cunning he waited until Catrina was almost intoxicated with music--an intoxication to which all great musicians are liable. "Ah!" he said. "I envy you your power. With music like that one can almost imagine that life is what one would wish it to be." She did not answer, but she wandered off into another air--a slumber song. "The Schlummerlied," said De Chauxville softly. "It almost has the power to send a sorrow to sleep." This time she answered him--possibly because he had not looked at her. "Such never sleep," she said. "Do you know that, too?" he asked, not in a tone that wanted reply. She made no answer. "I am sorry," he went on. "For me it is different, I am a man. I have man's work to do. I can occupy myself with ambition. At all events, I have a man's privilege of nursing revenge." He saw her eyes light up, her breast heave with a sudden sigh. Something like a smile wavered for a moment beneath his waxed mustache. Catrina's fingers, supple and strong, struck in great chords the air of a gloomy march from the half-forgotten muse of some monastic composer. While she played, Claude de Chauxville proceeded with his delicate touch to play on the hidden chords of an untamed heart. "A man's privilege," he repeated musingly. "Need it be such?" she asked. For the first time his eyes met hers. "Not necessarily," he answered, and her eyes dropped before his narrow gaze.