breakfast which finished his resources, he went weakly to the address the dramatist had given him. Mr. Holt had left behind him apologies for unavoidable absence. Would Mr. Stretton call again at three? He wandered desolately home, and; waited, and when the time drew near set out again. This time the dramatist was ready to: receive him.

'The lady who will sing the songs is here,' he said, 'and with your permission I will ask her to try them over now. Will you come with me?'

'I would rather await you here,' said Christopher. The tunes he had written were running riot in his head, and he thought them puerile, vulgar, shameful. He would have torn the papers on which they were written if he had not already surrendered them. He had liked them an hour ago, and now he thought them detestable.

'As you please,' said the dramatist, and added 'poor beggar!' inwardly as he went upstairs.

The composer sat in a sick half-dream and faintly heard a piano sounding in a distant room. It played the prelude of one of his songs. Now and then the sound of a female voice just touched his ears. He was so fatigued and weak that, in spite of his anxiety, he glided into a troubled doze in which he dreamed of Barbara. The dramatist returned, and Christopher came back to the daylight at the sound of the opening door.

'Mademoiselle Hélène and myself,' said Mr. Holt, 'are alike delighted with your setting of the songs. I shall ask you, Mr. Stretton, to read my comedy and to write the whole of the incidental music, if you will accept the commission. We can talk over terms afterwards. In the mean time, shall I offer you a cheque for ten guineas?'

'Thank you,' said Christopher. He took the cheque and walked to the bank, which was near at hand in Pall Mall, received his money, and plunged into an eating-house, whence he emerged intoxicated by the absorption of a cup of coffee and a steak. If you doubt the physical accuracy of that statement, pray reduce yourself to Christopher's condition and try the experiment. You are respectfully assured that you will doubt no longer.

CHAPTER III.

Christopher wrote the incidental music for the new comedy and composed an overture and entr'actes for it—work for which he was paid pretty liberally. He wrote to Barbara of his better fortunes, and promised to run down and see her so soon as the business strain was over. But the business strain was over and he did not go. He finished his music, rehearsed it once with the orchestra of the Garrick Theatre, and then fell ill of a low fever through which Rubach most kindly nursed him. The Bohemian himself was busy, rehearsing half the day and playing at the theatre at night, but he gave all his spare time to his friend. I had forgotten to tell you that, for convenience' sake, they had quitted their old lodgings, and had taken chambers off the Strand, within three minutes' easy walk of the house. It was here that Christopher fell ill.

When he grew a little better, the Bohemian rather began to aggravate him. Rubach talked of the new piece and its heroine, and of nothing but the new piece and its heroine. He was enraptured with her. He confessed himself overhead in love. So charming, so dainty, so sweet, so piquante, so lovable was Mademoiselle Hélène. Rubach, half in earnest, half in jest, confessed himself hopeless. Mademoiselle was engaged to Mr. Holt the dramatist.

'And even if she were not,' he said, 'is it likely she would look at a poor wretch of a fiddler? She is going to make her fortune. She is going to be the rage. She has never played before, but she sings like a lark, like a linnet, like a nightingale; and she walks the boards as naturally as if she had been born upon them. She is English too, in spite of her foreign name. Why on earth do professional English people take foreign names?'

'I don't know, I'm sure,' said Christopher wearily. 'I should like to go to sleep.'

While the sick man slept or made believe to sleep, Rubach was quiet as a mouse; but when he awoke the ecstatic praises began again, until, before the public knew more of the new actress than her name, our poor invalid was sick of her and of her praises to the very soul.

He tried, however, to take some interest in the piece, and as he became stronger he began to grow a little anxious about his own share in its success. When the eventful night came he was able to sit up for an hour before the piece began, and Rubach had to leave him. It was midnight before the faithful chum returned, and after looking in on the invalid, who seemed to slumber calmly, sat down for a final pipe by his own bedside. But Christopher was only 'playing 'possum,' as our playful American cousins put it, and, his anxiety over-riding his desire for quiet, he called out,

'Is that you, Carl?'

'Yes,' said the other, hastening into his room on tiptoe. 'I thought you were asleep.'

'How did the music go?'

'Capitally. Both the songs repeated. The overture and the second entr'acte would have been redemanded at a concert, but of course the play was the thing. Such a success, Stretton! Such a furore! She is a little goddess, a queen. You should see her and hear her! Ah me!'—with a comic ruefulness—'Holt should be a happy man.'

Christopher, warned by his outbreak, which he knew by old experience to be the merest exordium, 'played 'possum' again, with such success that Rubach left him and he went to sleep in earnest.

Holt came to see him next day, and brought the morning papers with him. The musician and he began to talk about writing an English opera together, and Christopher brightened at the scheme, which opened up the road to all his old ambitions.

'You are getting stronger now,' said Holt. 'We shall have you in to see the piece by-and-by.'

'I shall come in a day or two,' said Christopher; and when his visitor had gone, sat down to read over and over again the reviews of his own work. How they would gladden Barbara, he thought. How proud she would be of his success! how eager to hear the music! He laid-a romantic little plot for her pleasure. He would run down when he got stronger, and compel Barbara and her uncle on a visit to town. He would convey them to the theatre and when Barbara was quite in love with the music he would tell her that he himself had written it. How well the songs would suit her voice, and how charmingly she would sing them to him! Pleasant fancies, such as lovers have, floated through his mind. He took up his violin for the first time for a month, and played through the old tune, 'Cruel Barbara Allen.' Rubach came in and found him thus employed.

'You are getting on, my boy,' said the good Bohemian. 'Can you come and see the piece to-night? Are you strong enough?'

'Not to-night,' Christopher returned. 'In a day or two.' And he went oh playing 'Cruel 'Barbara Allen' dreamily.

'What is that?' said Rubach with a wry grin. 'Is not twice or thrice of it enough?'

Christopher laid down the instrument with a smile. When Carl had left him he took it up again and played over to himself the songs Barbara used to sing. He was weak and could not play for any great length of time together, but he played every now and then a melody, and in a while he got back again to 'Cruel Barbara Allen.' Back came Carl as he played it.

'That tune again? what is it?'

'An old ballad,' answered Christopher. "Cruel Barbara Allen."'

He found a pleasure in speaking her name aloud in this veiled way.

'Let the girl alone,' said Carl. 'I am tired of her.'

'I am not,' said Christopher with a weak little chuckle, 'and I have known her since she was a child.'

He began to play the air again, and Carl took away the violin with simulated theatric anger. But Carl's treatment of the name of the ballad as though it were the name of a girl still extant gave Christopher a temptation, and he played the air once or twice again in Carl's