e bottom of the shop, and approached
his platform. He was bending over some sheets of music--making his
next selection, doubtless.

'I beg your pardon--,' I began.

He turned towards me. You will not be surprised--I was looking into
Pair's own face.

* * * * *

You will not be surprised, but you will imagine what it was for me.
Oh, yes, I recognised him instantly; there could be no mistake. And he
recognised me, for he flushed, and winced, and started back.

I suppose for a little while we were both of us speechless, speechless
and motionless, while our hearts stopped beating. By-and-by I think I
said--something had to be said to break the situation--I think I said,
'It's you, Edmund?' I remember he fumbled with a sheet of music, and
kept his eyes bent on it, and muttered something inarticulate. Then
there was another speechless, helpless suspension. He continued to
fumble his music without looking up. At last I remember saying,
through a sort of sickness and giddiness, 'Let us get out of
here--where we can talk.'

'I can't leave yet. I've got another dance,' he answered.

'Well, I'll wait,' said I.

I sat down near him and waited, trying to create some kind of order
out of the chaos in my mind, and half automatically watching and
considering him as he played his dance--Edmund Pair playing a dance
for prostitutes and drunken sailors. He was not greatly changed. There
were the same grey eyes, deep-set and wide apart, under the same broad
forehead; the same fine nose and chin, the same sensitive mouth. The
whole face was pretty much the same, only thinner perhaps, and with a
look of apathy, of inanimation, that was foreign to my recollection of
it. His hair had turned quite white, but otherwise he appeared no
older than his years. His figure, tall, slender, well-knit, retained
its vigour and its distinction. Though he wore a shabby brown Norfolk
jacket, and his beard was two days old, you could in no circumstances
have taken him for anything but a gentleman. I waited anxiously for
the time when we should be alone--anxiously, yet with a sort of
terror. I was burning to understand, and yet I shrunk from doing so.
If to conjecture even vaguely what experiences could have brought him
to this, what dark things suffered or done, had been melancholy when
he was a nameless old musician, now it was appalling, and I dreaded
the explanation that I longed to hear.

At last he struck his fina