"Ja," interrupted René at a venture, and he found that, with these three expressions, he could get along very well and keep Mrs. Brock perfectly happy talking away as she never did when the use of English oppressed her. She never stopped. She talked him into the cab that came for them, out of it, up the stairs into the German club, and into the concert-room where she presented him to other women like herself, who nodded and smiled at his fumbled utterances--and talked. The room was arranged like a restaurant with little tables all round it, and the platform at one end slightly raised. For the most part the audience sat in little family groups and drank beer and ate sandwiches. René found himself confined between Mrs. Brock and another stout matron, and began to feel rather oppressed and to wish he had not come. Kurt and M'Elroy had joined a band of young men who took possession of a corner and looked on at the scene with English disapproval of its Germanism. Some of them René knew for Meyers and Schoeners and Krauses of the second and third generation. The room was soon filled with smoke, and the atmosphere became very thick, but the Germans ate and drank till their faces shone. And greedily they gulped down the music, which was beautiful and charming and sentimental by turns, though all seemed to meet with the same approval. A pale young Jew played the violin until René was near tears and Mrs. Brock heaved fat sighs of contentment; a portly Austrian with a sweet little tenor voice sang Schubert's Trout song so neatly and with such ease that René wriggled with pleasure; and there were quartets and a solo flute and a piano duet by two little blonde girls with pink legs and absurd pale eyes, with which they ogled their papa in the audience and the portrait of the Emperor William on the wall; and Linda played a Beethoven sonata (rather dull), and the Prelude of Rachmaninoff, which was received with thunderous applause. She wore a white dress and looked very fine, plump, and comely, with her white hands hovering over her and descending on the keys, and her head swaying until upon the close of the music it drooped to show a beautiful line from her neck to her waist. René had been so moved by the music that his eyes caught greedily at this extra pleasure, and they never moved from Linda's face as she stepped down from the platform, and came forward looking for her party. She was greeted with "Prosits" and raised tankards as she passed between the tables. Then she stopped and gazed over to the corner where Kurt was sitting. M'Elroy stood up to catch her attention. René saw that, and also how Linda shrank away from the assertion and the claim, feigned that she had not seen, and threaded her way toward her mother's table. To cover her coming, René began to talk wildly in German: "Das war wunderschön. Ich habe nie solches Klavierspiel gehört. Ich bin----"