ard the sound of a violin as
it wailed out the beginning notes of the _Chanson Triste_, and he
shivered, as if with cold.

For Mirko had opened his piteous eyes again, and whispered in little
gasps:

"Papa--play to me the air _Mamam_ loved. I can see her blue gauze
wings!" And in a moment, as his face filled with the radiance of his
vision he fell back, dead, into Zara's arms.

When Tristram reached the street he looked about him for a minute like a
blinded man; and then, as his senses came back to him, his first thought
was what he could do for her--that poor mother upstairs, with her dying
child. For that the boy was Zara's child he never doubted. Her
child--and her lover's--had he not called her "_Maman_." So this was the
awful tragedy in her life. He analyzed nothing as yet; his whole being
was paralyzed with the shock and the agony of things: the only clear
thought he had was that he must help her in whatever way he could.

The green taxi was still there, but he would not take it, in case she
should want it. He walked on down the street and found a cab for
himself, and got driven to his old rooms in St. James's Street: he must
be alone to think.

The hall-porter was surprised to see him. Nothing was ready for his
lordship--but his wife would come up--?

But his lordship required nothing, he wished to find something alone.

He did not even notice that there was no fire in the grate, and that the
room was icy cold--the agony of pain in his mind and soul made him
unconscious of lesser ills. He pulled one of the holland sheets off his
own big chair, and sat down in it.

Poor Zara, poor, unhappy Zara!--were his first thoughts--then he
stiffened suddenly. This man must have been her lover before even her
first marriage!--for Francis Markrute had told him she had married very
soon. She was twenty-three years old now, and the child could not have
been less than six; he must have been born when she was only seventeen.
What devilish passion in a man could have made him tempt a girl so
young! Of course this was her secret, and Francis Markrute knew nothing
of it. For one frightful moment the thought came that her husband was
not really dead and that this was he: but no, her husband's name had
been Ladislaus, and this man she had called "Mimo," and if the boy were
the child of her marriage there need then have been no secret about his
existence. There was no other solution--this Count Sykypri had been her
lover when