She looked surprised.  “No, a Bohemian, though I got her in Vienna.”  Bouchalka’s expression, and the remnant of a cake in his long fingers, gave her the connection.  She laughed.  “You like them?  Of course, they are of your own country.  You shall have more of them.”  She nodded and went away to greet a guest who had just come in.

A few moments later, Horace, then a beautiful lad in Eton clothes, brought another cup of tea and a plate of cakes for Bouchalka.  We sat down in a corner, and talked about his songs.  He was neither boastful nor deprecatory.  He knew exactly in what respects they were excellent.  I decided as I watched his face, that he must be under thirty.  The deep lines in his forehead probably came there from his habit of frowning densely when he struggled to express himself, and suddenly elevating his coal-black eyebrows when his ideas cleared.  His teeth were white, very irregular and interesting.  The corrective methods of modern dentistry would have taken away half his good looks.  His mouth would have been much less attractive for any re-arranging of those long, narrow, over-crowded teeth.  Along with his frown and his way of thrusting out his lip, they contributed, somehow, to the engaging impetuousness of his conversation.  As we talked about his songs, his manner changed.  Before that he had seemed responsive and easily pleased.  Now he grew abstracted, as if I had taken away his pleasant afternoon and wakened him to his miseries.  He moved restlessly in his clothes.  When I mentioned Puccini, he held his head in his hands.

“Why is it they like that always and always?  A little, oh yes, very nice.  But so much, always the same thing!  Why?” He pierced me with the despairing glance which had followed us out of the restaurant.

I asked him whether he had sent any of his songs to the publishers and named one whom I knew to be discriminating.  He shrugged his shoulders.  “They not want Bohemian songs.  They not want my music.  Even the street cars will not stop for me here, like for other people.  Every time, I wait on the corner until somebody else make a signal to the car, and then it stop,—­but not for me.”

Most people cannot become utterly poor; whatever happens, they can right themselves a little.  But one felt that Bouchalka was the sort of person who might actually starve or blow his brains out.  Something very important had been left out either of his make-up or of his education; something that we are not accustomed to miss in people.

Gradually the parlour was filled with little groups of friends, and I took Bouchalka back to the music-room where Cressida was surrounded by her guests; feathered women, with large sleeves and hats, young men of no importance, in frock coats, with shining hair, and the smile which is intended to say so many flattering things but which really expresses little more than a desire to get on.  The older men were standing about waiting for a word a deux with the hostess.