Once, as the musician flung his body round in a sweep of passion, Ingolby
saw the black eyes flash to the weapons on the wall with a malign look
which did not belong to the music alone, and he took a swift estimate of
the situation. Why the man should have any intentions against him, he
could not guess, except that he might be one of the madmen who have a
vendetta against the capitalist. Or was he a tool of Felix Marchand? It
did not seem possible, and yet if the man was penniless and an anarchist
maybe, there was the possibility. Or--the blood rushed to his face--or
it might be that the Gipsy's presence here, this display of devilish
antipathy, as though it were all part of the music, was due, somehow, to
Fleda Druse.
The music swelled to a swirling storm, crashed and flooded the feelings
with a sense of shipwreck and chaos, through which a voice seemed to cry-
the quiver and delicate shrillness of one isolated string--and then fell
a sudden silence, as though the end of all things had come; and on the
silence the trembling and attenuated note which had quivered on the
lonely string, rising, rising, piercing the infinite distance and sinking
into silence again.
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