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FLAMING
YOUTH
of counter-melody which surged from the violin. At the close he looked at her intently and in silence. “Well?” queried Pat, thrilling with expectancy of merited praise. “You sing rottenly,” he replied with entire seriousness. “Thank you!” Pat’s sombre eyes smarted with tears of mortification. “But you have a voice. Some of the notes—pure music. Your method—horrible. You should practice.” “T’ve been practicing. A terrible lot.” “Pffooh! Fiddle-faddling. You amateurs don*t know what work is!” “Do you think my voice is worth working with?” “Perhaps. It has beauty. You are beautiful, yourself. Where do you live?” Pat laughed. ‘“What’s the big idea, Mr. Stenak?” “J will take you home when you go. I wish to talk to you.” “Tm not going home. [Im staying with friends downtown.” “Then I will take you there. May I?” “Yes; if you'll play once more for me first.” Though it was quite a distance to her destination, Stenak did not offer to get a taxi. He observed that as the night was pleasant, it would be nice to walk part way, to which Pat, somewhat surprised, assented.
Imme-
diately, and with no more self-consciousness than an animal, he became intimately autobiographical. He told her that he was a Russian, a philosophic anarchist, with no belief in or use for society’s instituted formulas: marriage, laws, government—nothing but the eternal right of the individual to express himself to the utmost in his chosen medium of life.
All his assertiveness had left him;
he talked honestly and interestingly. Pat caught glimpses
