She played marvelously those
days, crying out through her violin the despair she had sealed
her lips against. On Thursday, playing for the master, she turned
to find him flourishing his handkerchief, and went home in a sort
of daze, incredulous that she could have moved him to tears.
The little Bulgarian was frankly her slave now. He had given up
the coffee-houses that he might spend that hour near her, on the
chance of seeing her or, failing that, of hearing her play. At
night in the Cafe Hungaria he sat for hours at a time, his elbows
on the table, a bottle of native wine before him, and dreamed of
her. He was very fat, the little Georgiev, very swarthy, very
pathetic. The Balkan kettle was simmering in those days, and he
had been set to watch the fire. But instead he had kindled a
flame of his own, and was feeding it with stray words, odd
glances, a bit of music, the curve of a woman's hair behind her
ears. For reports he wrote verses in modern Greek, and through
one of those inadvertences which make tragedy, the Minister of
War down in troubled Bulgaria once received between the pages of
a report in cipher on the fortifications of the Danube a verse in
fervid hexameter that made even that grim official smile.
Harmony was quite unconscious. She went on her way methodically:
so many hours of work, so many lessons at fifty Kronen, so many
afternoons searching for something to do, making rounds of shops
where her English might be valuable.
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