power of execution, indeed, but with a rare sweetness and
delicacy of touch and expression, and with an intense
absorption in the music, which communicated itself to even so
small a listener as Madelon.

It would have been hard to say which of the two had the more
enjoyment--she, as she sat motionless, her chin propped on her
two hands, her brown eyes gazing into space, and a hundred
dreamy fancies vaguely shaped by the music, flitting through
her brain; or he, as he bent over his violin, lovingly
exacting the sweet sounds, and his thoughts--who knows where? --
anywhere, one may be sure, rather than in the low-ceiled,
dusty garret, redolent of tobacco smoke, and not altogether
free from a suspicion of onions.

"There, my child," he would say at the end, "that is music--
that is art! What I was playing before was mere rubbish--trash,
unworthy of me and of my violin."

"And why do you play it?" asks Madelon, simply.

"Ah! why indeed?" said the violinist--"because one must live,
my little Fraülein; and since they will play nothing else at
the theatre, I must play it also, or I should be badly off."

"You are not rich, then?" said Madelon.

"Rich enough," he answered. "I gain enough to live upon, and I
ask no more."