When he asked Polyxena in his blandest tones if her mistress was visible, that gracious minister unto art nodded, and pointed with her thumb over her shoulder:
“The Natzelhuber has picked up a perfect counterpart of herself,” Agiropoulos had remarked, which struck Rudolph as unpleasantly accurate.
When Rudolph, after a timid knock, opened the door, he found the pianiste lying on a worn black sofa, smoking a cigarette and reading a French novel, with three cats about her, one comfortably seated at her head, and one across her feet. On the hearthrug there were two dogs feigning to be asleep, in order the more conveniently to pry into the affairs of man, and ridicule together the secrets they had discerned between two blinks and a snap at a fly. The room was poorly furnished and disorderly. A piano which had seen battle and better days, a faded carpet; music on the floor, music on tables, music on chairs. Over the mantelpiece a large portrait of Liszt, under it Rubinstein, above Beethoven, and on either side Chopin and George Sand.
In this little group of portraits consisted the sole decoration of the bare white walls, and a table in a corner held all that its owner had amassed of precious things in her public career: her medals gained at the Conservatoire, the few gifts of gold-studded objects she had condescended in her most amenable moods to accept from grand dukes and duchesses, and other courtly and wealthy admirers. She looked at Ehrenstein without getting up, and said:
“Nothing,” he retorted, sitting down uninvited, and staring at her a moment in cold inquiry.
She was not handsome, nay, she was ugly, and he was glad of it, being still of the innocent belief that the face is the clear index of the soul, and that a fair exterior cannot possibly cover a foul interior. Then, too, the fact that she was unprepossessing made the course he was contemplating so much the easier, since, however sincerely he might regret the artist, he could not in conscience pretend it possible that he should regret her face.
“You are doing well, my young friend,” laughed the Natzelhuber, “excellently well, ’pon my soul. Not so long ago a convent girl could not beat you in humility, and to-day you’ve cheek enough to lend even Agiropoulos a little.”