ing wonderful things with the piano, but somehow I couldn't
stand it, it made me dizzy. I had no business there anyhow.... You know
his orders. Every door locked in the building when he plays. If the
public knew it, what a row!" The man gasped in the spring air. Zora was
terrified. What secret was being withheld from her? Who could be with
him? Perhaps he was deceiving her, Belus, her husband! She tried to pass
the man, who stared at her vacantly.

"Don't go in, ma'am, don't go in. Every door is locked, all except the
two little doors looking out on the stage. My God, don't go there! I saw
a mango tree--I know the mango, for I've been in India--I saw the tree
bloom out over the keys, and its fruit fell on the stage. I saw it. And
I swear to the ladder, the rope ladder, which he threw up with his left
hand while he kept on playing with the other. If you had only seen what
came tumbling down that rope as he played the cradle-song! Baby faces,
withered faces, girls and mothers, the sweetest and the most fearful you
ever saw. They all came rolling down and the people in front sat still,
the old ones crying softly. And there were wings and devilish things. I
couldn't stand the air, it was alive; and your man's face, white and
drawn, with the eyes all gone like those jugglers I knew when I was a
boy in India--out there in India."

She trembled like the strings of a violin. Then after a sharp struggle
with her beating heart, and bravely pushing the man aside, she went on
rapid feet up the circular stairway, her head buzzing with the clamor of
her nerves. India! Belus had once confessed that his youth had been
spent in Eastern lands. What did it mean? As she mounted to the little
doors she listened in vain for the sound of music. She heard nothing,
not even the occasional singing of the electric lights. Not a break in
the air told her of the vast assembly on the other side of the wall.
Belus, where was he? Possibly in his room above. But why had she met
none of the usual officials? What devilry was loosed in the large
spaces of this hall? Again her heart roared threateningly and she was
forced to sit on a chair to catch her breath. A humming like the wind
plucking at the wires of a thousand AEolian harps set her soul shivering
in fresh dismay. The two little arched doors were in front of her, but
they seemed leagues away. To go to one and boldly open it she must; yet
her tissues were dissolving, her eyes dim. That door!--if she