“I shall never go to Cracow,” he said, with energy, “not even with you.  I was to have gone—­a year from now.  It was all arranged.  We have relations there—­and I have friends there—­musicians.  The chef d’orchestre—­at the Opera House—­he was one of my teachers in Paris.  Before next year, I was to have written a concerto on some of our Polish songs—­there are scores of them that Liszt and Chopin never discovered.  Not only love-songs, mind you!—­songs of revolution—­battle-songs.”

His eyes lit up and he began to hum an air—­to Polish words—­that even as given out in his small tenor voice stirred like a trumpet.

“Fine!” said Constance.

“Ah, but you can’t judge—­you don’t know the words.  The words are splendid.  It’s ’Ujejski’s Hymn’—­the Galician Hymn of ’46.”  And he fell to intoning.

     “Amid the smoke of our homes that burn,
     From the dust where our brothers lie bleeding—­
     Our cry goes up to Thee, oh God!

“There!—­that’s something like it.”

And he ran on with a breathless translation of the famous dirge for the Galician rebels of ’46, in which a devastated land wails like Rachel for her children.

Suddenly a sound rose—­a sound reedy and clear, like a beautiful voice in the distance.

“Constance!”

The lad sprang to his feet.  Constance laid hold on him.

“Listen, dear Otto—­listen a moment!”

She held him fast, and breathing deep, he listened.  The very melody he had just been humming rang out, from the same distant point; now pealing through the little house in a rich plenitude of sound, now delicate and plaintive as the chant of nuns in a quiet church, and finally crashing to a defiant and glorious close.

“What is it?” he Said, very pale, looking at her almost threateningly.  “What have you been doing!”

“It’s our gift—­our surprise—­dear Otto!”

“Where is it?  Let me go.”

“No!—­sit down, and listen!  Let me listen with you.  I’ve not heard it before!  Mr. Falloden and I have been preparing it for months.  Isn’t it wonderful?  Oh, dear Otto!—­if you only like it!” He sat down trembling, and hand in hand they listened.

The “Fantasia” ran on, dealing with song after song, now simply, now with rich embroidery and caprice.

“Who is it playing?” said Otto, in a whisper.

“It was Paderewski!” said Constance between laughing and crying.  “Oh, Otto, everybody’s been at work for it!—­everybody was so marvellously keen!”

“In Paris?”

“Yes—­all your old friends—­your teachers—­and many others.”

She ran through the names.  Otto choked.  He knew them all, and some of them were among the most illustrious in French music.

But while Connie was speaking, the stream of sound in the distance sank into gentleness, and in the silence a small voice arose, naively, pastorally sweet, like the Shepherd’s Song in “Tristan.”  Otto buried his face in his hands.  It was the “Heynal,” the watchman’s horn-song from the towers of Panna Marya.  Once given, a magician caught it, played with it, pursued it, juggled with it, through a series of variations till, finally, a grave and beautiful modulation led back to the noble dirge of the beginning.