Edouard, the first violin, saw Miss Warriner when she entered and took her place facing him at one of the tables in the centre of the room.  He was sitting with his violin on his knees, touching the strings with his finger-tips.  When he saw her he choked the neck of the violin with his hand, as though it had been the hand of a friend which he had grasped in a sudden ecstasy of delight.  The effect her appearance had made upon him was so remarkable that he glanced quickly over his shoulder to see if he had betrayed himself by some sign or gesture.  But the other musicians were concerned with their own gossip, and he felt free to turn again and from under his half-closed eyelids to observe her covertly.

There was nothing to explain why Miss Warriner, in particular, should have so disturbed him; the English women seated about her were as fair; she showed no great sorrow in her face; her beauty was not of the type which carried observers by assault.  And yet not one of the many beautiful women who on one night or another passed before Edouard in the soft light of the red shades had ever stirred him so strangely, had ever depressed him with such a tender melancholy, and filled his soul—­the soul of a Hungarian and a musician—­with such loneliness and unrest.  He knew that, so far as he was concerned, she was as distant as the Venus in the Louvre; she was, for him, a beautiful, unapproachable statue, placed, by some social convention, upon a pedestal.

As he looked at her he felt hotly the degradation of his silly uniform, of the striped sash around his waist, the tawdry braids, and the tasselled boots.  He felt as he had often felt before, but now more keenly than ever, the prostitution of his art in this temple of the senses, this home of epicures, where people met to feast their eyes and charm their palates.  He could not put his feelings into words, and he knew that if by some upheaval of the social world he should be thrown into her presence he would still be bound, he would not be able to speak or write what she inspired in him.  But—­and at the thought he breathed quickly, and raised his shoulders with a touch of pride—­he could tell her in his own way; after his own fashion he could express what he felt better even than those other men could tell what they feel—­these men for whose amusement he performed nightly, to whom it was granted to sit at her side, who spoke the language of her class and of her own people.  Edouard was not given to analyzing his emotions; like the music of his Tzigane ancestors, they came to him sweeping every chord in his nature, beating rapidly to the time of the Schardash, or with the fitfulness of the gypsy folksongs sinking his spirits into melancholy.  So he did not stop to question why this one face so suddenly inspired him; he only knew that he felt grateful, that he was impatient to pay his tribute of admiration, that he was glad he was an artist who could give his feelings voice.