r girlhood, she made a resolution. That afternoon she dressed
herself with pleasure, for the first time for months, and sallied forth
into the February frost.

Monsieur Edouard Harmost inhabited the ground floor of a house in the
Marylebone Road. He received his pupils in a large back room overlooking
a little sooty garden. A Walloon by extraction, and of great vitality,
he grew old with difficulty, having a soft corner in his heart
for women, and a passion for novelty, even for new music, that was
unappeasable. Any fresh discovery would bring a tear rolling down
his mahogany cheeks into his clipped grey beard, the while he played,
singing wheezily to elucidate the wondrous novelty; or moved his head up
and down, as if pumping.

When Gyp was shown into this well-remembered room he was seated, his
yellow fingers buried in his stiff grey hair, grieving over a pupil who
had just gone out. He did not immediately rise, but stared hard at Gyp.

"Ah," he said, at last, "my little old friend! She has come back! Now
that is good!" And, patting her hand he looked into her face, which had
a warmth and brilliance rare to her in these days. Then, making for
the mantelpiece, he took therefrom a bunch of Parma violets, evidently
brought by his last pupil, and thrust them under her nose. "Take them,
take them--they were meant for me. Now--how much have you forgotten?
Come!" And, seizing her by the elbow, he almost forced her to the piano.
"Take off your furs. Sit down!"

And while Gyp was taking off her coat, he fixed on her his prominent
brown eyes that rolled easily in their slightly blood-shot whites, under
squared eyelids and cliffs of brow. She had on what Fiorsen called her
"humming-bird" blouse--dark blue, shot with peacock and old rose, and
looked very warm and soft under her fur cap. Monsieur Harmost's stare
seemed to drink her in; yet that stare was not unpleasant, having in it
only the rather sad yearning of old men who love beauty and know that
their time for seeing it is getting short.

"Play me the 'Carnival,'" he said. "We shall soon see!"

Gyp played. Twice he nodded; once he tapped his fingers on his teeth,
and showed her the whites of his eyes--which meant: "That will have to
be very different!" And once he grunted. When she had finished, he
sat down beside her, took her hand in his, and, examining the fingers,
began:

"Yes, yes, soon again! Spoiling yourself, playing for that fiddler! Trop
sympathique! The ba