yne, now she has got into the theatre. Lehmann
will give her a better part by and by--oh, yes, I'll see to that for
Nina--and I must write to Pandiani, to tell him of her success--"

"Oh, but that's all settled, Linn," his friend broke in, perceiving the
situation at once. "Now you just keep quiet, and it will be all
perfectly arranged--perfectly. Of course I know you are glad your old
friend and companion has got a place in the theatre."

"Yes, she was my friend--she was my friend once," he said, and he looked
appealingly at Maurice? "but--but I sometimes think--sometimes it is my
head--that there is something wrong. Can you tell me, Maurice? There is
something--I don't know what--but it troubles me--I cannot tell what it
is. When she was here to-day, she would not speak to me. She came and
looked. She stood by the door there. She had on the black dress and the
crimson bonnet--but she had forgotten her music. I thought, perhaps, she
was going down to the theatre--but why wouldn't she speak to me,
Maurice? She did not look angry--she looked like--like--oh, just like
Nina--and I could not ask her why she would not say anything--my throat
was so bad--"

"Yes, I know that, Linn," Maurice said, gently, "and that is why you
mustn't talk any more now. You must lie still and rest, so that you may
take your place in the theatre again--"

"But haven't they told you I am never going to the theatre again?" he
said, eagerly. "Oh, no; as soon as I can I am going away abroad--I am
going away all over the world--to find some one. You said she was my
friend and my good comrade--do you think I could let her be away in some
distant place, and all alone? I could not rest in my grave! It may be
Malta, or Cairo, or Australia, or San Francisco; but that is what I am
set on. I have thought of it so long that--that I think my head has got
tired, and my heart a little bit broken, as they say, only I never
believed in that. Never mind, Maurice, I am going away to find Nina--ah,
that will be a surprise some day--a surprise just as when she first came
here--into the room--in the black dress and the crimson bonnet--_la
cianciosella_, she was going away again!--she was always so proud and
easily offended--always the _cianciosella_!"

He turned a little, and moaned, and lay still; and Maurice, fearing that
his presence would only add to this delirious excitement, was about to
slip from the room, when his sick friend called him back.

"Maurice,