He walked unsteadily, toward Piccadilly. A girl of the town passed and
looked up at him. Staring hard, he hooked his arm in hers without a
word; it steadied him, and they walked on thus together. Suddenly he
said:

"Well, girl, are you happy?" The girl stopped and tried to disengage her
arm; a rather frightened look had come into her dark-eyed powdered face.
Fiorsen laughed, and held it firm. "When the unhappy meet, they walk
together. Come on! You are just a little like my wife. Will you have a
drink?"

The girl shook her head, and, with a sudden movement, slipped her arm out
of this madman's and dived away like a swallow through the pavement
traffic. Fiorsen stood still and laughed with his head thrown back. The
second time to-day. SHE had slipped from his grasp. Passers looked at
him, amazed. The ugly devils! And with a grimace, he turned out of
Piccadilly, past St. James's Church, making for Bury Street. They
wouldn't let him in, of course--not they! But he would look at the
windows; they had flower-boxes--flower-boxes! And, suddenly, he groaned
aloud--he had thought of Gyp's figure busy among the flowers at home.
Missing the right turning, he came in at the bottom of the street. A
fiddler in the gutter was scraping away on an old violin. Fiorsen
stopped to listen. Poor devil! "Pagliacci!" Going up to the man--dark,
lame, very shabby, he took out some silver, and put his other hand on the
man's shoulder.

"Brother," he said, "lend me your fiddle. Here's money for you. Come;
lend it to me. I am a great violinist."

"Vraiment, monsieur!"

"Ah! Vraiment! Voyons! Donnez--un instant--vous verrez."

The fiddler, doubting but hypnotized, handed him the fiddle; his dark
face changed when he saw this stranger fling it up to his shoulder and
the ways of his fingers with bow and strings. Fiorsen had begun to walk
up the street, his eyes searching for the flower-boxes. He saw them,
stopped, and began playing "Che faro?" He played it wonderfully on that
poor fiddle; and the fiddler, who had followed at his elbow, stood
watching him, uneasy, envious, but a little entranced. Sapristi! This
tall, pale monsieur with the strange face and the eyes that looked drunk
and the hollow chest, played like an angel! Ah, but it was not so easy
as all that to make money in the streets of this sacred town! You might
play like forty angels and not a copper! He had begun another tune--like
little pluckings