She played the second Hungarian Rhapsody, and the Allegro Appassionato from the Moonlight Sonata, and Chopin's Funeral March, and she played them all marvelously well. Her technic was exact and brilliant; her feeling was ardent, intelligent and refined. For an hour she flooded the room with bewitching harmonies, and held every heart there spellbound. Elias, whose chief sentiment for her, a short while ago, had been one of half contemptuous amusement, felt an emotion very like genuine respect begin to stir within his bosom. It astonished him, it awed him a little, to find that a young lady who, in the commoner relations of life, appeared so crude and so prosaic, was possessed of such superb and consummate genius for a noble art. “There must be something _in_ her, after all,” he thought. She, perhaps, divined what was going on in his mind; for, when he had finished complimenting her upon her performance, she said, in a subdued voice, and with a gentler air than her usual one, “I know, Mr. Bacharach, that I'm not very much in conversation; but when I sit down at the piano, it seems as though somehow I was another girl, and a great deal nicer one; and I feel things that I don't ever feel anywhere else. I guess maybe music's my natural method of expression.” “Now, Mr. Bacharach,” Mr. Koch said, when Elias and the rabbi were taking their leave, “don't treat us like strangers. Drop in on us any evening, or to dinner any Sunday afternoon. We'll always be glad to see you.” “Yes; come over often,” added Mrs. Koch. “Come just exactly as if you was to home.” XVII. ELIAS had enjoyed his dinner at the Kochs' very much. He had been greatly amused by it; but he had derived from it, besides, a pleasure that was deeper than mere amusement--the pleasure, namely, which comes of contact with people whom we feel to be thoroughly good and wholesome. “They, with their strident voices, and vulgar manners, and untutored ways of thinking, are the sort of Jews that Gentiles judge the race by,” he reflected. “It is a comfort to know that underneath all their superficial roughness and unrefinement, the core is sound and sweet.” It was with a sense of agreeable anticipation that, on the following Thursday evening, he started out to pay his digestion visit. The maid-servant showed him into the parlor, and went off to announce him. Returning a moment later, she asked him to step down-stairs to the basement. There he was very cordially welcomed; and Mr. Koch explained, “I thought you'd rather join us down here, than have us come up to the show-room. (That's my nick-name for the parlor; pretty good, hey?) Down here it's more comfortable and homey.” Mr. and Mrs. Blum smiled and swayed their heads at him; and Mrs. Koch, clasping Lester to her bosom with one hand, offered him the other.