spoon, which he placed on the dish being handed to me, and a third menial of lesser splendour but also white-gloved brought a cloth and wiped up the mess, and the Grafin became more terribly and volubly kind than ever.  Helena’s eyes never wavered.  They were still on my ear.  A little more and I would have reached that state the goaded shy get to when they suddenly in their agony say more striking things than the boldest would dream of saying, but Herr von Inster came in.

He is the young man I told you about who played my accompaniment the other night.  We had got to the coffee, and the servants were gone, and the Graf had lit a cigar and was gazing in deep abstraction at the tablecloth while the Grafin assured me of his keen interest in music and its interpretation by the young and promising, and Helena’s eyes were resting on a spot there is on my only really nice blouse,—­I can’t think how it got there, mother darling, and I’m fearfully sorry, and I’ve tried to get it out with benzin and stuff, but it is better to wear a blouse with spots on it than not to wear a blouse at all, isn’t it.  I had pinned some flowers on it too, to hide it, and so they did at first, but they were fading and hanging down, and there was the spot, and Helena found it.  Well, Herr von Inster came in, and put us all right.  He looks like nothing but a smart young officer, very beautiful and slim in his Garde-Uhlan uniform, but he is really a lot of other things besides.  He is the Koseritz’s cousin, and Helena says Du to him.  He was very polite, said the right things to everybody, explained he had had his luncheon, but thought, as he was passing, he would look in.  He would not deny, be said, that he had heard I was coming—­he made me a little bow across the table and smiled—­and that he had hopes I might perhaps be persuaded to play.

Not having a fiddle I couldn’t do that.  I wish I could have, for I’m instantly natural and happy when I get playing; but the Grafin said she hoped I would play to some of her friends one evening as soon as she could arrange it,—­friends interested in youthful geniuses, as she put it.

I said I would love to, and that it was so kind of her, but privately I thought I would inquire of Kloster first; for if her friends are all as deeply interested in music as the Graf and Helena, then I would be doing better and more profitably by going to bed at ten o’clock as usual, rather than emerge bedizened from my lair to go and flaunt in these haunts of splendid virtue.

After Herr von Inster came I began faintly to enjoy myself, for he talked all round, and greatly and obviously relieved his aunt by doing so.  Helena let go of my ear and looked at him.  Once she very nearly smiled.  The other girl left off murmuring, and talked about things I could talk about too, such as England and Germany—­they’re never tired of that—­and Strauss and Debussy.  Only the Graf sat mute, his eyes fixed on the tablecloth.