reluctant shuddering agony;--and then, as I listened, before my eyes a black mist gathered slowly, and I thought I saw great rocks bursting asunder into flame, and drifting islands in a sea of fire,--faces, wonderful, hideous, beautiful, peered at me out of a darkness denser than night, and in the midst of this there came a tune, complete in sweetness and suggestion,--a piercing sword-like tune that plunged into my very heart and rankled there,----my breath failed me,--my senses swam,--I felt that I must move, speak, cry out, and implore that this music, this horribly insidious music should cease ere I swooned with the voluptuous poison of it,--when, with a full chord of splendid harmony that rolled out upon the air like a breaking wave, the intoxicating sounds ebbed away into silence. No one spoke,--our hearts were yet beating too wildly with the pulsations roused by that wondrous lyric storm. Diana Chesney was the first to break the spell. "Well, that beats everything I've ever heard!" she murmured tremulously. I could say nothing,--I was too occupied with my own thoughts. Something in the music had instilled itself into my blood, or so I fancied, and the clinging subtle sweetness of it, moved me to strange emotions that were neither wise, nor worthy of a man. I looked at Lady Sibyl; she was very pale,--her eyes were cast down and her hands were trembling. On a sudden impulse I rose and went to Rimânez where he still sat at the piano, his hands dumbly wandering over the keys. "You are a great master"--I said--"A wonderful performer! But do you know what your music suggests?" He met my fixed gaze, shrugged his shoulders, and shook his head. "Crime!" I whispered--"You have roused in me evil thoughts of which I am ashamed. I did not think that was possible to so divine an Art." He smiled, and his eyes glittered with the steely brightness of stars on a wintry night. "Art takes its colours from the mind, my dear friend;"--he said--"If you discover evil suggestions in my music, the evil, I fear, must be in your own nature." "Or in yours!" I said quickly. "Or in mine;"--he agreed coldly--"I have often told you I am no saint." I stood hesitatingly, looking at him. For one moment his great personal beauty appeared hateful to me, though I knew not why. Then the feeling of distrust and repulsion slowly passed, leaving me humiliated and abashed. "Pardon me, Lucio!" I murmured regretfully--"I spoke in haste; but truly your music almost put me in a state of frenzy,--I never heard anything in the least like it----" "Nor I,"--said Lady Sibyl, who just then moved towards the piano--"It was marvellous! Do you know, it quite frightened me?" "I am sorry!" he answered with a penitent air--"I know I am quite a failure as a pianist--I am not sufficiently 'restrained,' as the press men would say." "A failure? Good God!" exclaimed Lord Elton at this juncture--"Why, if you played like that in public, you'd drive everyone frantic!"