Before a week had passed Nancy had discovered how difficult a thing it was to be the mother of a wonderchild, and had grown thin and harassed by the stream of visitors and the deluge of letters that overwhelmed their modest apartment in the Vinohrady. As early as eight o'clock in the morning rival violinists walked beneath the windows to hear if Anne-Marie was practising, and how she was practising, and what she was practising. As they did not hear her, they concluded that she practised on a mute fiddle, and were wrathful and disappointed. By ten o'clock Lori, the smiling maid, had introduced a reporter or two, an impresario or two, a mother or two with a child or two, and none of them seemed to need to go home to luncheon. Questions were asked, and advice was tendered. "How long did the child practise every day?" "Two or three hours," said Nancy. "Too much," cried the mothers. "Too little," said the impresarios. "At what age did she begin?" "When she was between seven and eight." "Too young," said the mothers. "Too old," said the impresarios. "How does she sleep?" asked the mothers. "What fees do you expect?" asked the impresarios. "Why do you dress her in blue?" asked the mothers. "Why not in white or in black velvet?" "Why don't you cut her hair quite short and dress her in boy's clothes, and say she is five years old?" asked the impresarios. "How old is she really?" "Does her father beat her?" There seemed to be no restraint to the kind and the quantity of questions people were prepared to ask.

Meanwhile the fame of Anne-Marie had flashed to Vienna, and she was invited to play in the Musikverein Saal. They said good-bye to the Professor with tears of gratitude, and left—taking away with them his best violin and his only assistant, for Bemolle was to go with them and carry the violin, and run the messages, and see after the luggage, and attend to the business arrangements. This last duty neither FrÄulein nor Anne-Marie, and least of all Nancy, was capable of undertaking. Bemolle himself was nervous about it, but the Professor (who knew as much about business as Anne-Marie) had coached him.

"All you have to do is to count the tickets they give you, and the money they give you. And there must be no discrepancy. Do you see?"

Yes, Bemolle saw. And so that was what he did, everywhere and after each concert. He counted the tickets, and he counted the money that was given him very carefully and lengthily, while the smiling manager stood about and smoked, or went out and refreshed himself; and it was always all right, and there was never any discrepancy anywhere. So that was all right.

The great hall of the Musikverein was filled for Anne-Marie's first concert. It was crowded and packed for her second, and third, and fourth. A blond Archduchess asked her to play to her children, and Anne-Marie's lips were taught to frame phrases to Royal Highnesses, and her little black legs were trained to obeisance and curtsey. Then Berlin telegraphed for the Wonderchild, and the Wonderchild went to Berlin and played Bach and Beethoven in the Saal der Philharmonic. Two tall, white-haired gentlemen came into the artists' room at the end of the concert. Solemnly they kissed the child's forehead, and invoked God's blessing upon her. When they had left, Nancy saw Bemolle running after them and shaking their hands. Nancy said: "What are you doing, Bemolle?" The emotional Bemolle, who, since Anne-Marie's dÉbut, passed his days turning pale and red, and always seemed on the verge of tears, exclaimed: "I have shaken hands with Max Bruch and with Joachim. I do not care if now I die."

And always at the end of the concerts crowds waited at the doors for the child to appear. Anne-Marie passed through the cheering people with her arms full of flowers, nodding to the right, nodding to the left, smiling and thanking and nodding again, with Nancy nodding and smiling and thanking close behind her. Sometimes the crowd was so great that they could not pass, and Anne-Marie had to be lifted up and carried to the carriage buoyantly, laughing down at everybody and waving her hands. Then there was a rush round the carriage door. Nancy, crushed and breathless, tearful and laughing, managed to get in after her, the door banged, and off they were, Anne-Marie still nodding first at one window then at the other, and rapping her fingers against the glass in farewell.... At last the running, cheering crowds were left behind, and she would drop her head with a little sigh of happiness against Nancy's arm.

"Did you like my concert, mother dear? Did I play well, Liebstes?"

That was the hour of joy for Nancy's heart. The concerts themselves turned her into a statue of terror, enveloped her with fear as with a sheet of ice. While Anne-Marie played, swaying slightly like a flower in a breeze, her spirit carried away on the wing of her own music, Nancy sat in the audience petrified and blenched, her hands tightly interlaced, her heart thumping dull and fast in her throat and in her ears. If the blue dream-light of Anne-Marie's eyes wandered round and found her, and rested on her face, Nancy would try to smile—a strained, panic-stricken smile, which made Anne-Marie, even while she was playing, feel inclined to laugh. Especially if she were at that moment performing something very difficult, spluttering fireworks by Bazzini, or a romping, breakneck bravura by Vieuxtemps, she would look fixedly at her mother, while an impish smile crept into her eyes, and her fingers rushed and scampered up and down the strings, and her bow swept and skimmed with the darting flight of a swallow.

Nancy, watching her and trying, with ashen lips, to respond to her smile, would say to herself: "She will stop suddenly! She will forget. She cannot possibly remember all those thousands and thousands of notes. She will let her bow drop. The string will break. Something will happen! And if my heart goes on hammering like this, I shall fall down and die." But nothing happened, and she did not die, and the piece ended. And the applause crackled and crashed around them. And the concert ended, and soon they were alone together in the flower-filled, fragrant penumbra of the moving carriage.

"Are you happy, mother dear?"

"Yes, yes, yes! I am so happy, my own little girl!"

In the gentle month of May they went to London.

London! Nancy's father's home! London! Close to Hertfordshire, where Nancy had lived the first eight years of her life.

On board the Channel steamer Nancy, with beating heart, full of tenderness and awe, pointed out the white cliffs to Anne-Marie. "That is England."

"Yes," said Anne-Marie, "I know."

"You must love England, darling," said Nancy.

"We shall see," said the Wonderchild, who was not prepared to love by command. FrÄulein was bubbling over with reminiscences. It was in Dover that Nancy's mother had come to meet her twenty-four years ago. They had had tea and sponge-cakes in the train. They had bought an umbrella somewhere, because she had left hers on the boat, and it was raining.

So it was to-day, raining drearily, heavily on the sad green landscapes as the train ran through Kent and towards London.

They went to a hotel, close to the hall where Anne-Marie was to play. And all the way driving to it Bemolle wept, with emotion at being in London, and with emotion at not being in Italy; for in a little village at the foot of the Appenines, his old mother still lived, following him with anxious letters while he rushed across Europe carrying the violin for Anne-Marie.

The first London concert was to be the week after their arrival. The manager, pink-faced and blue-eyed, came to the hotel to talk about the programme.

"England is not Berlin. Don't make it too heavy," he said. So the Beethoven Concerto was taken out, and the Vieuxtemps Concerto put in its stead. The Chaconne was taken out, and the Faust Phantasie put in its stead. The manager said, "That's right," and went out to play golf.

The London audience and the London critics came en masse to hear Anne-Marie. The London audiences clapped and shouted. The London critics carped and reproved. How sad it was, said they, that a child with such a marvellous gift should waste her genius on music of the cheap virtuoso kind! What a responsibility on the shoulders of parents and masters who withheld from her the classic glories of Beethoven and Bach!

The manager, coming for the programme of the second concert, said: "Pile it on. Give it to them heavy. It's the heavy stuff they want." Then he went out and played golf.

So Anne-Marie played the Beethoven Concerto and the Beethoven Romance, the Bach Chaconne and Fugue, Prelude and Sarabande. And the audience shouted and clapped.

But the critics carped and reproved. How can a mere child understand Beethoven and Bach? How wrong to overweight the puerile brain with the giants of classic composition! It is almost a sacrilege to hear a little girl venturing to approach the Chaconne. Let her play Handel and Mozart.

So in the third concert Anne-Marie played Handel and Mozart, and the audience shouted and clapped.

But the critics said that, though she played the easy, simple music very nicely for her age, still, in a London concert hall one expected to hear something more puissant and authoritative. And why did she give concerts at all? Why not do something else? Study composition, for instance?

"That's England all over," said the manager, and went out and played golf.

Nancy was bewildered and unhappy. Bemolle danced about in helpless Latin rage, and FrÄulein sat down and wrote a long letter to the Times. But it is uncertain whether the Times printed it.

Anne-Marie, who did not know that critics existed, nor care what critics said, was happy and cheerful, and bought a dog in Regent Street, to replace the quarantined Schopenhauer. He was a young and thin and careless dog, and answered to the name of Ribs. Then Anne-Marie decided that she loved England very much.

Many people called at the hotel to ask for autographs, and to express their views. One elderly musician was very stern with Anne-Marie, and sterner still with Nancy. He began by asking Nancy what she thought her child was going to be in the future.

"I do not know," said Nancy. "I am grateful for what she is now."

"Ah! but you must think of the future. You want her to be a great artist—"

"I don't know that I do," said Nancy. "She is a great artist now. If she degenerates"—and Nancy smiled—"into merely a happy woman, she will have had more than her share of luck."

"Take care! The prodigy will kill the artist!" repeated the stern man. "You pluck the flower and you lose the fruit."

Nancy laughed. "It is as if you said: 'Beware of being a rose-bud lest you never be an apple!' I am content that she should bloom unhindered, and be what she is. Why should she not be allowed to play Bach like an angel to-day, lest she should not be able to play him like Joachim ten years hence?"

"Yes, why not!" piped up Anne-Marie, who had paid no attention to the conversation, but who liked to say "Why not?" on general principles.

The stern man turned to her. "Bach, my dear child——" he began.

Anne-Marie gave a little laugh. "Oh, I know!" she said cheerfully.

"What do you know?" asked the gentleman severely.

"You are going to say, 'Always play Bach; nothing else is worthy,'" said Anne-Marie, regretting that she had joined in the conversation.

"I was not going to say anything of the kind," said the stern man.

"Oh, then you were going to say the other thing: 'Do not attempt to play Bach—no child can understand him.' Professors always say one or the other of those two things. Much stupid things are said about music."

"It is so," said the gentleman severely. "You cannot possibly understand Bach."

Anne-Marie suddenly grasped him by the sleeve.

"What do you understand in Bach? I want to know. You must tell me what you understand. Exactly what it is that you understand and I don't. Bemolle!" she cried, still holding the visitor's sleeve. "Give me the violin!"

Bemolle jumped up and obeyed with beaming face.

"Anne-Marie, darling!" expostulated Nancy.

But Anne-Marie had the violin in her hand and wildness in her eye.

"Stay here," she said to the visitor, relinquishing his sleeve with unwilling hand, and hastily tuning the fiddle. "Now you have got to tell me what you understand in Bach." She played the first five of the thirty-two variations of the Chaconne; then she stopped.

"What does Bach mean? What have you understood?" she cried. The English musician leaned back in his chair and smiled with benevolent superiority.

"And now—now I play it differently." She played it again, varying the lights and shades, the piani and the forti. "What different thing have you understood?"

"And now—now I play it like Joachim. So, exactly so, he played it for me and with me ...

"...Now what have you understood that I have not? What has Bach said to you, and not to me, you silly man?"

Nancy took Anne-Marie's hand. "Hush, Anne-Marie! For shame!"

"I will not hush!" cried Anne-Marie, with flaming cheeks. "I am tired of hearing them always say the same stupid things."

The visitor, smiling acidly, stood up to go. "I am afraid too much music is not good for a little girl's manners," he said.

"Mother," said Anne-Marie, with her head against her mother's breast. "Tell him to wait. I want to say a thing that I can't. Help me."

"What is it, dear?"

"When we were to have gone to a country that you said was hot and pretty—and dirty—where was that?"

"Spain?"

"Yes, yes, yes! You said something about the little hotels there ... the funny little hotels. What did you say about them?"

Nancy thought a moment. Then she smiled and remembered. "I said: 'You can only find in them what you bring with you yourself.'"

"Yes, yes!" cried Anne-Marie, raising her excited eyes. "Now say that about music."

And Nancy said it. "You will only find in music what you bring to it from your own soul."

"Yes," said Anne-Marie, turning to the visitor; "how can you know what I bring? How can you know that what you bring is beautifuller or gooder? How can you know that Bach meant what you think and not what I think?"

"Don't get excited, you funny little girl," said the visitor; and he took his leave with dignity.

But Anne-Marie was excited, and did not sleep all night.