At the opposite end of the room was a piano. A young man sat before it
facing the wall, while beside him there stood a woman intently tuning a
violin which she held tucked under her chin. Approaching middle age, she
was rather stout, with a sallow, discontented face, which yet held some
traces of its former evanescent prettiness. Both lashes and brows of her
faded light eyes were heavily blackened, and the rouge which lay thickly
on her cheeks only served to accentuate their haggard lines. The hair,
dark at the roots, was blondined to a canary color where it rolled back
under her hat, large and black, of a dashing Gainsborough style and
covered with faded red roses. For the rest, her costume consisted of a
white shirt waist, a wine-colored skirt and shoes with very high heels
which were conspicuously, and no doubt uncomfortably, run over.
Her violin finally tuned to her satisfaction, she bent her head to speak
to the young man at the piano. He turned to answer her, and for a moment
his delicate, sad face was outlined against the wall behind him. Then,
with an emphatic little nod, he began to play and the woman lifted her
violin and swung in with him.
The only virtue she possessed as a violinist was that she kept good
time, but although it was extremely unlikely that any member of that
audience recognized the fact, the boy was a musician by the divine right
of gift, a gift bestowed at birth. A wheezy old piano, and yet he drew
from it sweet and thrilling notes; a hackneyed, cheap waltz measure, and
yet he invested it with the glamour of romance.
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