e fiddled. At this hour it was like an empty cavern. A smell
of stale beer and tobacco smoke pervaded the imprisoned air. He sat down
upon the deserted platform and pretended to practise. He played
erratically, feverishly. The waiters, moving about their morning
preparations with an almost uncanny quiet, listened attentively. Finally
one of them stopped before him.

"What has come over you, Suvaroff?" questioned the man. "You are making
our flesh creep!"

"Oh, pardon me!" cried Suvaroff. "I shall not trouble you further!"

And with that he packed up his violin and left. He did not go back to
the cafe, even at the appointed hour. Instead, he wandered aimlessly
about. All day he tramped the streets. He listened to street-fakirs,
peered into shop-windows, threw himself upon the grass of the public
squares and stared up at the blue sky. He had very little personal
consciousness; he seemed to have lost track of himself. He had an absurd
feeling that he had come away from somewhere and left behind a vital
part of his being.

"Suvaroff! Suvaroff!" he would repeat over and over to himself, as if
trying to recall the memory of some one whose precise outline had
escaped him.

He caught a glimpse of his figure in the mirror of a shop-window. He
went closer, staring for some moments at the face opposite him. There
followed an infinitesimal fraction of time when his spirit deserted him
as completely as if he were dead. When he recovered himself he had a
sense that he was staring at the reflection of a stranger. He moved
away, puzzled. Was he going mad? Then, suddenly, everything grew quite
clear. He remembered the Italian, the accordion, the hunchback.
Characters, circumstances, sequences--all stood out as sharply as the
sky-line of a city in the glow of sunset.... He put his fingers to his
pulse. Everything seemed normal; his skin was moist and cool. Yet last
night he had been very ill. That was it! Last night he had been ill!

"What strange dreams people have when they are in a fever!" he exclaimed
for the second time that day. He decided to go home. "I wonder, though,"
thought he, "whether the Italian is still playing that awful
instrument?" Curiously enough, the idea did not disturb him in the
least. "I shall teach him a Russian tune or two!" he decided,
cheerfully. "Then, maybe his playing will be endurable."

When he came again to his lodgings he was surprised to find a knot of
curious people on the opposite side of th