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: "My Dearest."
The two words filled Allison with panic. Not knowing how Rose was wont
to address 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 began 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:
[Illustration: musical notation]
and outside a woman paused, almost at the threshold, with her hands upon
her heart.
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