Will you have a
drink?"
The girl shook her head, and, with a sudden movement, slipped her arm
out of this madman's and dived away like a swallow through the pavement
traffic. Fiorsen stood still and laughed with his head thrown back. The
second time to-day. SHE had slipped from his grasp. Passers looked
at him, amazed. The ugly devils! And with a grimace, he turned out
of Piccadilly, past St. James's Church, making for Bury Street. They
wouldn't let him in, of course--not they! But he would look at the
windows; they had flower-boxes--flower-boxes! And, suddenly, he groaned
aloud--he had thought of Gyp's figure busy among the flowers at home.
Missing the right turning, he came in at the bottom of the street.
A fiddler in the gutter was scraping away on an old violin. Fiorsen
stopped to listen. Poor devil! "Pagliacci!" Going up to the man--dark,
lame, very shabby, he took out some silver, and put his other hand on
the man's shoulder.
"Brother," he said, "lend me your fiddle. Here's money for you. Come;
lend it to me. I am a great violinist."
"Vraiment, monsieur!"
"Ah! Vraiment! Voyons! Donnez--un instant--vous verrez."
The fiddler, doubting but hypnotized, handed him the fiddle; his dark
face changed when he saw this stranger fling it up to his shoulder and
the ways of his fingers with bow and strings. Fiorsen had begun to walk
up the street, his eyes searching for the flower-boxes.
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