from fright, of a delicate canary, although the culprit had done
nothing more than sit before the cage, licking his lips. This had
happened several years ago, but each party was still fertile in
planning annoyances for the other, and the females did not bow when
they met. On the fourth floor, next the Fursts, lived a pale, harassed
teacher, with a family which had long since outgrown its
accommodation; for the wife was perpetually in childbed, and cots and
cradles were the chief furniture of the house. As the critical moments
of her career drew nigh, the "Frau Lehrer" complained, with an
aggravated bitterness, of the unceasing music that went on behind the
thin partition; and this grievance, together with the racy items of
gossip left behind the midwife's annual visit, like a trail of smoke,
provided her and Furst's mother with infinite food for talk. They were
thick friends again a few minutes after a scene so lively that blows
seemed imminent, and they met every morning on the landing, where,
with broom or child in hand, they stood gossiping by the hour.

When Maurice rang, Frau Furst opened the door to him herself, having
first cautiously examined him through the kitchen window. Drying her
hands on her apron, she ushered him through the tiny entry--a place of
dangers, pitch-dark as it was, and lumbered with chests and
presses--into Franz's room, the "best room" of the house. Here were
collected a red plush suite, which was the pride of Frau Furst's
heart, and all the round, yellowing family photographs; here, too,
stood the well-used Bechstein, pile upon pile of music, a couple of
music-stands, a bust of Schubert, a faded, framed diploma. For years,
assuredly, the windows had never been thrown wide open; the odours of
stale coffee and forgotten dinners, of stove and warmed wood, of
piano, music and beeswax: all these lay as it were in streaks in the
atmosphere, and made it heavy and thought-benumbing.