too young to remember it, he had come to
New York from Lisbon. With him had come the swashbuckler in oil. He grew
up in New York, developed artistic tastes, lost the oil man, acquired a
wife, lost her also, but not until she had given him a daughter who was
named Bianca, a name which, after elongating into Casabianca, shortened
itself into Cassy.

Meanwhile, on Madison Avenue, then unpolluted, there was a brown-stone
front, a landau, other accessories, the flower of circumstances not
opulent but easy, the rents and increments of the swashbuckler's estate,
which by no means had come from Lisbon but which, the rich and unusual
costume boxed in camphor, had been acquired in the import and sale of
wine.

The fortune that the swashbuckler made descended to his son, who went to
Wall Street with it. There the usual cropper wiped him out, affected his
health, drove him, and not in a landau either, from Madison Avenue, left
him the portrait, the violin, the table and nothing else.

But that is an exaggeration. To have debts is to have something. They
stir you. They stirred him. Besides there was Cassy. To provide for both
was the violin which in his hands played itself. For years it sufficed.
Then, with extreme good sense, he fought with the Union, fought with
Toscanini, disassociated himself from both. Now, latterly, with his arm
in a sling, the wolf was not merely at the door, it was in the
living-room of this Harlem flat which Cassy had just entered.

It was then that he repeated it. "You're late!"

For the past hour he had sat staring at things which the room did not
contain--a great, glowing house; an orchestra demoniacally led by a
conductor whom he strangely resembled; a stage on which, gracile in the
violet and silver of doublet and hose, the last of the Caras bowed to
the vivas.

Then abruptly the curtain had fallen, the lights had gone out, the
vision faded, banished by the quick click of her key.

But not entirely. More or less the dream was always with him. When
to-day is colourless, where can one live except in the future? To-day is
packed with commonplaces which, could we see them correctly, are
probably false for in the future only beautiful things are true. It is
stupid not to live among them, particularly if you have the ability, and
what artist lacks it? In the future, there is fame for the painter,
there is posterity for the poet and much good may it do them. But for
the musician, particularly for the