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Show f£~~:0t"be .l.,t. t.lc. Glib ~ose anb Silller away, frightened, from the dusty highway of a modest civilisation, and went back into the woods, where it met another brook and travelled to the river in company. The house, just back of the singing stream, was a little place, as Madame Bernard had said, but, though he rapped repeatedly, no one answered. So he lifted the latch and cautiously stepped in. A grand piano, unblushingly new, and evidently of recent importation from the city, occupied most of the tiny living-room. The embers of a wood fire lay on the hearth and the room was faintly scented with the sweet smoke of hard pine. A well-known and wellworn sonata was on the music rack; a volume of Chopin had fallen to the floor. Allison picked it up, and put it in its place. On the piano was some of his own music, stamped with his Berlin address. A familiar hat, trimmed with crushed roses, lay on the window seat. The faint, indefinable scent of attar of roses was dimly to be discerned as a sort of background for the fragrant smoke. An open book lay face downward on the table; a bit of dainty needlework was thrown carelessly across the chair. An envelope addressed to "Madame Francesca Bernard" was on the old-fashioned writing desk, and a single page of rose-stamped paper lay near it, bearing, in a familiar hand: u My Dearest.'' ll:be bouse 'I!Ulbere 10lle 1tlleb 359 The two words filled Allison with panic. t;bc4llt- Not knowing how Rose was wont to address EIZII!ta:am Jiacll the little old lady they both loved, he conjured up the forbidding spectre of The Other Man, that had haunted him for weeks past. Sighing, he sat down at the piano, and be-gan to drum idly, with one hand. "Wonder if I could use the other," he thought. "Pretty stiff, I guess." He began to play, from memory: .u ~ 11'- 0 ~ ... ~. j;- ru < - - " •kgato. -1'- -1'- :t: :t: .... : =t!rrrf :: and outside a woman paused, almost at the threshold, with her hands upon her heart. In a sudden throb of pain, the old days came back. She saw herself at the piano, aching with love |