“I hope he knows them by heart properly, dear,” she whispered to Michael.  “I shall be so nervous for fear he’ll forget them in the middle, which is so liable to happen if you play without your notes.”

Michael laid his hand on his mother’s.

“Hush, mother,” he said, “you mustn’t talk while he’s playing.”

“Well, I was only whispering.  But if you tell me I mustn’t—­”

The hall was crammed from end to end, for not only was Hermann a person of innumerable friends, but he had already a considerable reputation, and, being a German, all musical England went to hear him.  And to-night he was playing superbly, after a couple of days of miserable nervousness over his debut as a pianist; but his temperament was one of those that are strung up to their highest pitch by such nervous agonies; he required just that to make him do full justice to his own personality, and long before he came to the “Variations,” Michael felt quite at ease about his success.  There was no question about it any more:  the whole audience knew that they were listening to a master.  In the row immediately behind Michael’s party were sitting Sylvia and her mother, who had not quite been torn away from her novels, since she had sought “The Love of Hermione Hogarth” underneath her cloak, and read it furtively in pauses.  They had come in after Michael, and until the interval between the classical and the modern section of the concert he was unaware of their presence; then idly turning round to look at the crowded hall, he found himself face to face with the girl.

“I had no idea you were there,” he said.  “Hermann will do, won’t he?  I think—­”

And then suddenly the words of commonplace failed him, and he looked at her in silence.

“I knew you were back,” she said.  “Hermann told me about—­everything.”

Michael glanced sideways, indicating his mother, who sat next him, and was talking to Barbara.

“I wondered whether perhaps you would come and see my mother and me,” he said.  “May I write?”

She looked at him with the friendliness of her smiling eyes and her grave mouth.

“Is it necessary to ask?” she said.

Michael turned back to his seat, for his mother had had quite enough of her sister-in-law, and wanted him again.  She looked over her shoulder for a moment to see whom Michael was talking to.

“I’m enjoying my concert, dear,” she said.  “And who is that nice young lady?  Is she a friend of yours?”

The interval was over, and Hermann returned to the platform, and waiting for a moment for the buzz of conversation to die down, gave out, without any preliminary excursion on the keys, the text of Michael’s “Variations.”  Then he began to tell them, with light and flying fingers, what that simple tune had suggested to Michael, how he imagined himself looking on at an old-fashioned dance, and while the dancers moved to the graceful measure of a minuet,