‘And sixteen out of the nineteen had brought “What Jolly Dogs we are!” Fact, I assure you, _parole d’honneur_! But hush! He is playing his own accompaniment. What! Rubinstein! “Asra!” Impossible!’ If so, the impossible was being performed in a masterly manner. Would-be sarcastic lieutenants, tittering young ladies, were bewitched into silence and admiration. Rubinstein’s weird and melodious legend of the youth whose race ‘die if they love,’ was sung to the end, as few of the audience had ever before heard it sung. The last notes, _Die sterben wenn sie lieben_, were followed at first by silence; and then some murmurs, not loud, but deep, of applause, greeted the singer. The song that followed was, _Es blinkt der Thau_, and it made Sara’s heart beat. That finished, as if to give his audience a complete change, he struck a couple of deep chords, and began to sing that oft-quoted, hackneyed, but ever-beautiful _Ich grolle nicht_. Sara felt a slight shiver run through her. Why did he choose that one weird song of Heine’s, set to Schumann’s equally weird music? She had heard it once at a concert, sung in a style which hardly rose above mediocrity, and yet even then it had impressed her; and she had pondered involuntarily over the gruesome, hinted mystery of the last lines. Jerome sang the strange song with a depth and a meaning all his own: her artist-nature thrilled to the strains, which are in very truth a song of death; it was ghostly—it was as if her spirit was enfeebled and chilled, and had to trail its drooping wings through a land full of vague and awful shadows. ‘Ich sah die Nacht In deines Herzensraume; Ich sah die Schlang’ Die dir am Herzen frisst— Ich sah, mein’ Lieb’, Wie sehr du elend bist! Ich grolle nicht.’ There was a pause as he finished this song. Jerome half-rose from the piano, but a voice cried from the window: ‘We have not had the test yet, Mr. Wellfield. Give us a love-song. Give us _Adeläida_.’ Sara saw, even from her place in the background, the expression that flashed into the young man’s eyes, and over his face. ‘Good!’ was all he said, as he sat down again, and that melodious, significant single _F_ was struck—that note which is the prelude to the sea of love and fire and passion which follows. Sara sat pale and composed in her place, but feeling as if everyone in the room must see and observe that she was blushing furiously—so burningly hot were her cheeks. Each time that the notes ‘Adeläida’ rang out, she felt that she was apostrophised—the company, and the lighted room oppressed her—yet she looked, to one who was observing her from the other side of the room, grave, quiet, almost tired.