itz.

"Would you care to share the cottage with me?" he said abruptly. "I want
to find a place to read in--out of Oxford."

Radowitz looked up, amazed--speechless! Falloden's eyes met Otto's
steadily. The boy turned away. Suddenly he covered his face with his
free hand.

"Why did you hate me so?" he said, breathing quickly. "What had I done
to you?"

"I didn't hate you," said Falloden thickly. "I was mad."

"Because you were jealous? What a fool you were! She never cared a brass
farthing for me--except as she, does now. She would like to nurse
me--and give me back my music. But she can't--and you can't."

There was silence again. Otto's chest heaved. As far as he could with
his one hand, he hid the tears in his eyes from his companion. And at
last he shook off emotion--with a laugh in which there was no mirth.

"Well, at least, I shouldn't make such a row now as I used to
do--practising."

Falloden understood his reference to the soda-water bottle fusillade, by
which the "bloods," in their first attack upon him, had tried to silence
his piano.

"Can't you play at all?" he said at last, choosing the easiest of
several remarks that presented themselves.

"I get about somehow on the keys. It's better than nothing. And I'm
writing something for my degree. It's rather good. If I could only keep
well!" said the boy impatiently. "It's this damned health that gets
in the way."

Then he threw himself back in his chair, all the melancholy of his face
suddenly breaking up, the eyes sparkling.

"Suppose I set up one of those automatic pianos they're now talking
about--could you stand that?"

"I would have a room where I didn't hear it. That would be all right."

"There's a wonderful idea I heard of from Paris a week or two ago," said
Otto excitedly--"a marvellous electric invention a man's at work on,
where you only turn a handle, or press a button, and you get
Rubinstein--or Madame Schumann or my country-man, Paderewski, who's
going to beat everybody. It isn't finished yet. But it won't be for the
likes of me. It'll cost at least a thousand pounds."

"They'll get cheaper," said Falloden, his chin in his hands, elbows on
knees, and eyes fixed on his companion. It seemed to him he was talking
in a dream, so strange was this thing he had proposed; which apparently
was going to come to pass. At any rate Radowitz had not refused. He sat
with the dachshund on his knees, alternately pulling out and folding its
long ea