of it!'

'How long can she have known Holt?' asked Carl, rather to himself than Christopher.

'Why, how can I tell?' said the musician, groaning. 'She has deceived me all along.'

There was no present consolation possible, and Carl had the sense to see it. He lit a pipe and watched his unhappy friend sympathetically. Christopher went up and down the room exclaiming here and there against the perfidy of woman. There came an imperious summons at the door.

'Don't let him in, whoever it is,' said Christopher.

Somebody kicked the door and roared 'Rubach!'

'It's Milford,' said Carl; 'the manager. There's going to be a row. A bit of a row will do you good, my poor fellow. I shall let him in.'

So said, so done. Enter Milford the lordly, in a towering rage, followed by Holt, evidently disposed to appease his manager's wrath.

'I have called,' said the manager, blowing hard and fixing a savage eye on Carl, 'to know what the devil you mean, sir, by turning the theatre into a bear-garden?'

'My good sir——' said Carl with Continental affability.

'Don't "good sir" me, sir,' cried the manager. 'What the devil do you mean, sir?'

'This is a matter for commiseration, sir, not for anger,' Carl began.

Then the great man began to swear, and did it well and fluently, with gusto. When he had done, he collected himself and shook his fist at Carl with a final admonition.

'Don't you come near my theatre again, you—you foreign rascal.'

'It is I who am to blame,' said Christopher, 'and not he. It was I who played for him, and who—in short, I am to blame.'

The manager glared speechlessly for a moment, and then gasped,

'Explain, sir.'

'Mr. Rubach,' said Christopher, 'had sprained his wrist by a fall this evening. He came to me and requested me to play for him behind the scenes in the last act. You know what happened. That I cannot explain.'

The situation was awkward for everybody. If Barbara's perfidy had sullied his own life and left him desolate, Christopher could still speak no evil of her in the presence of the man for whom she had jilted him. Carl's tongue was tied by his regard for Holt's feelings. The manager naturally wanted to get at the bottom of the situation, and the dramatist felt that a friend whom he was learning to value had somehow imperilled his play. All four stood silent, and footsteps came leisurely up the stone stairs, and were heard very distinctly in the stillness. The door had been left open, but one of the new-comers stopped to tap at it.

'Come in,' cried Carl, ready to welcome any diversion.

A red face and a grey head came round the door.

'Does Mr. Stretton———? Oh! Chris, my boy, how are you?'

No other a person than Barbara's uncle.

'I've brought Barbara to see you. Come in, Barbara. Why, what's the matter?'

Christopher turned away from Barbara, as she approached him, veiled, and walked to the window, through which he looked on the night, seeing nothing.

'Chris!' said Barbara, in a pathetic, wounded voice. 'Chris!' Mechanically she raised her veil and looked round upon her uncle with a pale scared face.

'Stretton!' roared Carl, leaping at him and laying forcible hands upon him, forgetful of his own sprained wrist. 'Is this Miss Allen?'

'Yes,' said Christopher, with a sob which would have way in spite of him.

'Then it isn't Mademoiselle Hélène,' said Carl.

Christopher turned with bewildered looks.

'Tell me,' he said to Barbara wildly, 'are you playing at the Garrick Theatre?'

'You've been a-drinking, Christopher,' said Barbara's uncle plaintively.

'No,' said Barbara, frightened as she well might be at the presence of strangers at this curious scene, and at the scene itself. 'Uncle had business in London, and he brought me with him this afternoon. We heard that you had written the music to a play, and we went to hear it. We—we thought you would be conducting, and that I should see you there.'

Little Barbara put up her hands and began to cry.

'Sir,' said Carl to the manager, 'I ask you, as the first step towards the understanding of this business, to admit that the likeness between this young lady and Mademoiselle Hélène is very remarkable and close.'

'Very remarkable!' said the manager.

'Wonderful!' said Mr. Holt.

'Me and my niece have been a-laughing at it and a-noticing of it all the evening,' said Barbara's uncle.

Carl told the story.

'I'll have it in the papers,' said Milford the manager. 'Stunning good advertisement; Eh? No names, of course. Oh dear, no; no names!'

Then the manager and the dramatist suddenly felt themselves de trop, and Carl, catching the infection, went with them.

'Can you forgive me for doubting you?' said Christopher. 'It was I who suffered by it.'

'Poor Chris!' said Barbara, and quite regardless of her uncle she put her arms round her lover's neck and kissed him like the tenderhearted, unsophisticated child she was. 'Am I cruel Barbara now?' she asked, nestling to him, and looking up with a smile half audacious, half appealing.

'No,' said Christopher a little sheepishly. But as she slipped away from him he recovered himself and took her in his arms and kissed her tenderly.

And so, shortly thereafter—to finish in the style of the best of all story-tellers who entertained us in our childhood—they married, and lived happily.