When she spoke, her rich voice had a note of imperious entreaty in it.
'Your violin interests me, Monsieur! Oh, I know that wood! It came to
you--?'
'A legacy from an esteemed friend.'
She shot back. 'His name?' with the flash which I waited for.
'Maurice Cristich, Madame!'
We were deserted in our corner. The company had strayed in, one by one, to
the large _salon_ with the great piano, where a young Russian musician,
a pupil of Chopin, sat down to play, with no conventional essay of
preliminary chords, an expected morsel. The strains of it wailed in just
then, through the heavy, screening curtains; a mad _valse_ of his own, that
no human feet could dance to, a pitiful, passionate thing that thrilled the
nerves painfully, ringing the changes between voluptuous sorrow and the
merriment of devils, and burdened always with the weariness of 'all the
Russias,' the proper _Welt-schmerz_ of a young, disconsolate people. It
seemed to charge the air, like electricity, with passionate undertones; it
gave intimate facilities, and a tense personal note to our interview.
'A legacy! so he is gone.' She swayed to me with a wail in her voice, in
a sort of childish abandonment: 'and _you_ tell me! Ah!' she drew back,
chilling suddenly with a touch of visible suspicion.
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