{"product_id":"2940012985415","title":"Tante","description":"CHAPTER I\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt was the evening of Madame Okraska's concert at the old St. James's\u003cbr\u003eHall. London was still the place of the muffled roar and the endearing\u003cbr\u003eugliness. Horse-'buses plied soberly in an unwidened Piccadilly. The\u003cbr\u003eprivate motor was a curiosity. Berlin had not been emulated in an\u003cbr\u003ealtered Mall nor New York in the façades of giant hotels. The Saturday\u003cbr\u003eand Monday pops were still an institution; and the bell of the\u003cbr\u003emuffin-man, in such a wintry season, passed frequently along the foggy\u003cbr\u003estreets and squares. Already the epoch seems remote.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMadame Okraska was pausing on her way from St. Petersburg to New York\u003cbr\u003eand this was the only concert she was to give in London that winter. For\u003cbr\u003emany hours the enthusiasts who had come to secure unreserved seats had\u003cbr\u003ebeen sitting on the stone stairs that led to the balcony or gallery, or\u003cbr\u003eon the still narrower, darker and colder flight that led to the\u003cbr\u003eorchestra from Piccadilly Place. From the adjacent hall they could hear\u003cbr\u003ethe strains of the Moore \u0026amp; Burgess Minstrels, blatant and innocuously\u003cbr\u003evulgar; and the determined mirth, anatomized by distance, sounded a\u003cbr\u003elittle melancholy. To those of an imaginative turn of mind it might have\u003cbr\u003eseemed that they waited in a tunnel at one far end of which could be\u003cbr\u003eperceived the tiny memory of tea at an Aerated Bread shop and at the\u003cbr\u003eother the vision of the delights to which they would emerge. For there\u003cbr\u003ewas no one in the world like Madame Okraska, and to see and hear her was\u003cbr\u003eworth cold and weariness and hunger. Not only was she the most famous of\u003cbr\u003eliving pianists but one of the most beautiful of women; and upon this\u003cbr\u003erestoring fact many of the most weary stayed themselves, returning again\u003cbr\u003eand again to gaze at the pictured face that adorned the outer cover of\u003cbr\u003ethe programme.","brand":"SAP","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47145492185328,"sku":"2940012985415","price":0.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/2940012985415_p0.jpg?v=1763575182","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/2940012985415","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}