“It is not in the least Italian”—­said Heliobas, alluding to the Symphony, when it was concluded, and the buzz of conversation surged through the hall like the noise that might be made by thousands of swarming bees,—­“There is not a breath of Italian air or a glimpse of Italian light about it.  The dreamy warmth of the South,—­the radiant color that lies all day and all night on the lakes and mountains of Dante’s land,—­the fragrance of flowers—­ the snatches of peasants’ and fishermen’s songs—­the tunefulness of nightingales in the moonlight,—­the tinkle of passing mandolins,—­all these things should be hinted at in an ‘Italian’ Symphony—­and all these are lacking.  Mendelssohn tried to do what was not in him,—­I do not believe the half-phlegmatic, half-philosophical nature of a German could ever understand the impetuously passionate soul of Italy.”

As he spoke, a fair girl, with gray eyes that were almost black, glanced round at him inquiringly,—­a faint blush flitted over her cheeks, and she seemed about to speak, but, as though restrained by timidity, she looked away again and said nothing.  Heliobas smiled.

“That pretty child is Italian,” he whispered to Alwyn.  “Patriotism sparkled in those bright eyes of hers—­love for the land of lilies, from which she is at present one transplanted!”

Alwyn smiled also, assentingly, and thought how gracious, kindly, and gentle were the look and voice of the speaker.  He found it difficult to realize that this man, who now sat beside him in the stalls of a fashionable London concert-room, was precisely the same one who, clad in the long flowing white robes of his Order, had stood before the Altar in the chapel at Dariel, a stately embodiment of evangelical authority, intoning the Seven Glorias!  It seemed strange, and yet not strange, for Heliobas was a personage who might be imagined anywhere,—­by the bedside of a dying child, among the parliaments of the learned, in the most brilliant social assemblies, at the head of a church,—­anything he chose to do would equally become him, inasmuch as it was utterly impossible to depict him engaged in otherwise than good and noble deeds.  At that moment a tumultuous clamor of applause broke out on all sides,—­applause that was joined in by the members of the orchestra as well as the audience,—­a figure emerged from a side door on the left and ascended the platform—­a slight, agile creature, with rough, dark hair and eager, passionate eyes—­no other than the hero of the occasion, Sarasate himself.  Sarasate e il suo Violino!—­there they were, the two companions; master and servant—­king and subject.  The one, a lithe, active looking man of handsome, somewhat serious countenance and absorbed expression,—­ the other, a mere frame of wood with four strings deftly knotted across it, in which cunningly contrived little bit of mechanism was imprisoned the intangible, yet living Spirit of Sound.  A miracle in its way!—­that out of such common and even vile materials as wood,