Diana felt as if she were in the middle of a beautiful dream from which she might at any moment waken to the disappointing reality of things.

Hardly able to believe the evidence of her senses, she found herself once again in the narrow hall, shepherded by the maestro's portly form.

As he held the door open for her to pass out into the street, some one ran quickly up the steps, pausing on the topmost.
"Ha, Olga!" exclaimed Baroni, beaming.

"You haf returned just too late to hear Mees Quentin.

But you will play for her--many times yet." Then, turning to Diana, he added by way of introduction: "This is my accompanist, Mees Lermontof." Diana received the impression of a thin, satirical face, its unusual pallor picked out by the black brows and hair, of a bitter-looking mouth that hardly troubled itself to smile in salutation, and, above all, of a pair of queer green eyes, which, as the heavy, opaque white lids above them lifted, seemed slowly--and rather contemptuously--to take her in from head to foot.
She bowed, and as Miss Lermontof inclined her head slightly in response, there was a kind of cold aloofness in her bearing--a something defiantly repellent--which filled Diana with a sudden sense of dislike, almost of fear.