" said the man automatically.

"I have not--now. To-morrow I will call."

"The money or the piano is my instructions," said the collector. Von
Barwig stood as if stricken dumb. The shame, the degradation were too
great. He appealed to the man with outstretched hands. Tears were in
his eyes, but the man did not look at him; he went into the hall,
opened the front door, and yelled out, "Come on, Bill----"

Miss Stanton arose from the piano and walked over to the window. "It
is a very busy view from here, isn't it?" she said; "gracious, how
crowded the streets are!"

Poor Von Barwig's cup of misery was now full. She had been a witness
of his poverty. His lies about his success and his pupils were all
laid bare to her; he was disgraced forever in her eyes. He had lied to
her, and she had found him out.

The collector came back with the men and the process of moving the
piano began. Von Barwig's sense of humour came to his rescue.

"Thank heaven they are taking that box of discords away at last! What
a piano! Did you notice it, Miss Stanton?"

Miss Stanton had noticed it, and nodded, "I did indeed," she said.

"Not one note in harmonious relationship with another," went on Von
Barwig, trying to smile as they upset his music on the floor. "Not a
sharp or a flat that is on good terms with his neighbour."

The only reply the piano mover made was to drop one of the piano legs
heavily on the floor, making the dust fly.

"The black and white keys forever at war with each other," said Von
Barwig, forcing a laugh, in which his visitor joined. Seeing her
merriment, Von Barwig began to recover his spirits. "The next time you
call, Miss Stanton," he said, "I will have here an instrument that
shall contain at least a faint suggestion of music. In the meantime I
am most thankful that I have no longer to listen to a piano that sounds
like a banjo."

The whole situation appealed forcefully to Miss Stanton's sense of
humour, and she thoroughly enjoyed the old man's jesting. "If he can
rise above a condition like that," she thought, "he must be a splendid
man." She longed to comfort, to help him; but how?

As the men finally took out the piano, Von Barwig pretended to breathe
a sigh of relief.

"I'm glad it's gone," he said, "you can't tell what a relief!" He
laughed, but his laugh did not deceive her; her musical ear recognised
its artificiality in a moment. She could feel rather than see he was
suffering,