She glanced at him with impish amusement as she moved towards the door.

“Come along, Davilof,” she said.  “I suppose you want to hear your own music—­even if Magda’s dancing no longer interests you?”

Davilof gave her his arm down the steps.

“What do you mean, miladi?” he asked.  “There is no more beautiful dancing in the world.”

“Then why have you jacked up your job of accompanist?  Shoes beginning to pinch a little, eh?”—­shrewdly.

“You mean I grow too big for my boots?  No, madame.  If I were the greatest musician in Europe, instead of being merely Antoine Davilof, it could only be a source of pride to be asked to accompany the Wielitzska.”

Lady Arabella paused on the pavement, her foot on the step of the limousine.

“Then how is it that Mrs. Grey accompanies her now?  She was playing for her at the Duchess of Lichbrooke’s the other evening.

“Magda didn’t tell you, then?”

“No, she didn’t; or I’d not be wasting my breath in asking you.  I asked her, and she said you had taken to playing wrong notes.”

A faint smile curved the lips above the small golden beard.

“Then it must be true.  Undoubtedly I played wrong notes, miladi.”

“Very careless of you, I’m sure.”  Under the garish light of a neighbouring street-lamp her keen old eyes met his significantly.  “Or—­very imprudent, Davilof.  You need the tact of the whole Diplomatic Service to deal with Magda.  And you ought to know it.”

“True, miladi.  But I was not designed for diplomacy, and a man can only use the weapons heaven has given him.”

“I wouldn’t have suggested heaven as invariably the source of your inspirations,” retorted Lady Arabella.  And hopped into the car.

They arrived at the Imperial Theatre to find Mrs. Grey already seated in Lady Arabella’s box.  Someone else was there, too—­old Virginie, with her withered-apple cheeks and bright brown, bird-like eyes, still active and erect and very little altered from the Virginie of ten years before.  Just as she had devoted herself to Diane, so now she devoted herself to Diane’s daughter, and no first performance of a new dance of the Wielitzska’s took place without Virginie’s presence somewhere in the house.  To-night, Lady Arabella had invited her into her box and Virginie was a quivering bundle of excitement.  She rose from her seat at the back of the box as the newcomers entered.

“Sit down, Virginie.”  Lady Arabella nodded kindly to the Frenchwoman.  “And pull your chair forward.  You’ll see nothing back there, and there is plenty of room for us all.”

“Merci, madame.  Madame est bien gentille.” Virginie’s voice was fervent with ecstatic gratitude as she resumed her seat and waited expectantly for Magda’s appearance.

Other dances, performed principally by lesser lights of the company and affording only a briefly tantalising glimpse of Magda herself, preceded the chief event of the evening.  But at last the next item on the programme read as The Swan-Maiden (adapted from an Old Legend), and a tremour of excitement, a sudden hush of eager anticipation, rippled through the audience like wind over grass.