The three visitors ate sandwiches and pretended to relish Munich beer served in tall stone mugs.  Aunt Lucas, who was shaped like a ’cello, made more than a pretence of sipping; she drank one entirely, regretting the exigencies of chaperonage:  to ask for more might shock the proper young man.

“It’s horrid here, after all,” she remarked discontentedly.  “So many people—­such people—­and very few nice ones.  The Batsons are over there, Lora; but then you don’t care for them.  O dear, I wish the band would strike up again.”

It did.  A vicious swirl of colour and dizzy, dislocated rhythms prefaced the incantations of the Czardas.  Instantly the eating, gabbling crowd became silent.  Alfassy Janos magnetized his hearers with cradling, caressing movements of his fiddle.  He waved like tall grass in the wind; he twisted snakewise his lithe body as he lashed his bow upon the screaming strings; the resilient tones darted fulgurantly from instrument to instrument.  After chasing in circles of quicksilver, they all met with a crash; and the whole tonal battery, reenforced by the throbbing of Arpad Vihary’s dulcimer, swept through the suite of rooms from ceiling to sanded floor.  It was no longer enchanting music, but sheer madness of the blood; sensual and warlike, it gripped the imagination as these tunes of old Egypt, filtered through savage centuries, reached the ears.  Lora trembled in the gale that blew across the Puzta.  She imagined a determined Hungarian prairie, over which dashed disordered centaurs brandishing clubs, driving before them a band of satyrs and leaping fauns.  The hoofed men struggled.  At their front was a monster with a black goat-face and huge horns; he fought fiercely the half-human horses.  The sun, a thin scarf of light, was eclipsed by earnest clouds; the curving thunder closed over the battle; the air was flame-sprinkled and enlaced by music; and most melancholy were the eyes of the defeated Pan—­the melancholy eyes of Arpad Vihary....

Aunt Lucas was scandalized.  “Do you know, Lora, that the impudent dulcimer virtuoso”—­she prided herself on her musical terms—­“actually stared you out of countenance during the entire Czardas?” And she could have added that her niece had returned the glance unflinchingly.

Mr. Steyle noticed Lora’s vacant regard when he addressed her and insisted on getting her away from the dangerous undertow of this “table d’hote music,” as he contemptuously called it.  He summoned the waiter.

Lora shed her disappointment.  “Oh, let’s wait for the cymbalom solo,” she frankly begged.

Her aunt was unmoved.  “Yes, Mr. Steyle, we had better go; the air is positively depressing.  These slumming parties are delightful if you don’t overdo them—­but the people!” Up went her lorgnon.

They soon departed.  Lora did not dare to look back until she reached the door that opened on the avenue; as she did so her vibrant gaze collided with the Hungarian’s.  She determined to see him again.