"
"You have studied with Lyndahl?"
"He is my master."
"I--will I sometime hear you sing?"
"I am not yet great. When I am foremost like you, yes."
"Gina--Gina Berg, that is a beautiful name to make famous."
"You see how it is done? Gins--Berg. Gina Berg.
"Clev-er!"
They stood then smiling across a chasm of the diffidence of youth, she
fumbling at the great fur pelt out of which her face flowered so dewily.
"I--well--we--we are in the fourth box--I guess we had better be
going--fourth box left." He wanted to find words, but for consciousness
of self could not "It's a wonderful house out there waiting for you,
Leon Kantor, and you--you're wonderful, too!"
"The--flowers--thanks!"
"My father, he sent them. Come, father--quick!"
Suddenly there was a tight tensity that seemed to crowd up the little
room.
"Abrahm--quick--get Hancock--that first rows of chairs has got to be
moved--there he is, in the wings--see the piano ain't dragged down too
far! Leon, got your mute on your pocket? Please Mr. Ginsberg--you must
excuse--Here, Leon, is your glass of water. Drink it, I say. Shut that
door out there, boy, so there ain't a draft in the wings. Here, Leon,
your violin. Got neckerchief? Listen how they're shouting--it's for
you--Leon--darlink--go!"
In the center of that vast human bowl which had finally shouted itself
out, slim, boylike, and in his supreme isolation, Leon Kantor drew bow
and a first thin, pellucid, and perfect note into a silence breathless
to receive it.
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