During this interchange of words Lefevre (with Lady Mary) had been moving with Julius, as he drew off across the room to greet Nora, and the doctor could not help observing how the attention of all the company was bent on his friend.  Before his entrance all had been chatting or laughing easily with their neighbours; now they seemed as constrained and belittled as is a crowd of courtiers when a royal personage appears in their midst.  In truth, Julius at all times had a grace, an ease, and a distinction of manner not unworthy of a prince; but on this occasion he had an added something, an indefinable attraction which strangely held the attention.  Lefevre, therefore, was scarcely surprised (though, perhaps, a trifle disappointed, considering that he was a lover) to note that Lady Mary was regarding Julius with a silent, wide-eyed fascination.  They convoyed Julius to Nora, and then withdrew, leaving them together.

There were several fresh arrivals and new introductions to Lady Mary.  These, Lefevre observed, she went through half-absently, still turning her eyes on Julius in the intervals with open and intense interest.

“Well,” said Lefevre at length, smiling in spite of a twinge of jealousy, “what do you think, now you have seen him, of the fascinating Julius?”

She gave him no answering smile, but replied as if she painfully withdrew herself from abstraction,—­“I—­I don’t know.  He is very interesting and very strange.  I—­I can’t make him out.  I don’t know.”

Then Lefevre turned his eyes on Julius, and became aware of something strained in the relations of his sister and his friend.  He could not forbear to look, and as he continued looking he instinctively felt that a passionate scene was being silently enacted between them.  They sat markedly apart.  Nora’s bosom heaved with suppressed emotion, and her look, when raised to Julius, plied him with appeal or reproach—­Lefevre could not determine which.  The doctor’s interest almost drew him over to them, when Lady Lefevre appeared and said to Julius—­

“Do go to the piano, Julius, and wake us up.”

Nora put out her hand with a gesture which plainly meant, “Don’t!...  Don’t leave me!”

But Julius rose, and as he turned (the doctor noted) he bent an inscrutable look of pain on Nora.  He sat down at the piano and struck a wild, sad chord.  Instantly it became as if the people in the room were the instrument upon which he played,—­as if the throbbing human hearts around him were directly connected by invisible strings with the ivory keys that pulsed beneath his fingers.  What was the music he played no one knew, no one cared, no one inquired:  each individual person was held and played upon, and was allowed no pause for reflection or criticism.  The music carried all away as on the flood of time, showing them, on one hand, sunshine and beauty and joy, and all the pride of life; and on the other, darkness and cruelty, despair, and defiance,