sician, Von Hammer, the father of the prodigy who played the
piano, had quarrelled with the Master and had retired to Buffalo. Where,
after a brief struggle as teacher of music, he had turned to playing for
the movies. It must have nearly slain the man, for he was a sincere
artist, a lover of classical music ... and now compelled to play ragtime
and popular melodies for a living.

All that I held of him, despite myself, was an unkind remembrance--his
breath had been charnel-foul, and always, when discussing anything, he
insisted on taking the lapel of his listener's coat and talking directly
into his nose....

* * * * *

But his successor was playing at an introductory musicale....

A tall, alert, dark young man ... Italian-dark ... his eyes shone behind
his gold-rimmed glasses, swimming large and distorted under the
magnification of the lenses ... his lips were full and red, his
moustache of a heavy, bristly black that made them look redder and
fuller still, almost negroid.

He played the piano with violent, expert energy ... his favourite work
was the "Turkish Patrol," which, Spalton exclaimed, as he applauded
vigorously, he would now adopt as the Eos anthem.

The drawing-room was crowded ... a few visiting celebrities ... Eoites,
too, but only the quasi-celebrities among them. The mass of the workers
was as rigidly excluded now, under the new regime, as ordinary retainers
ever are.

I stood by my "Southern Lady." She was in evening dress ... wore a
lorgnette ... I trembled as I leaned over her, for I could see the firm,
white-orbed upper parts of her breasts ... I was trying to be lightly
playful, and was clumsy at it. I took up her lorgnette and toyed with
it. I sat on the edge of a table ... and where I sat stood a supposed
Greek vase of great antiquity and value.

It is a law that prevails in three-dimensional space that two objects
cannot occupy the same place at one time. I dislodged the vase. It came
to the floor in a crash ... which stopped the music ... which stopped
everything. There fell a dead silence. I looked down at the fragments,
hardly knowing what to do....

Spalton came over to me ... intensely ... his eyes blazing.

"Razorre, come out into the lobby ... I want to speak to you." I
willingly followed him ... he wheeled on me when he had me alone.

"Do you know why we have these paintings of Gresham's hung high up there
on the wall?" he asked rhetorically, w