In truth he was no coward; and his
conceit would not lessen his courage when the test of it came.
As his eyes brightened from gloom and sullenness to valiant enmity, they
suddenly fell on a table in a corner where lay a black coffin-shaped
thing of wood. In this case, he knew, was the Sarasate violin.
Sarasate--once he had paid ten lira to hear Sarasate play the fiddle in
Turin, and the memory of it was like the sun on the clouds to him now.
In music such of him as was real found a home. It fed everything in him
--his passion, his vanity; his vagabond taste, his emotions, his self-
indulgence, his lust. It was the means whereby he raised himself to
adventure and to pilgrimage, to love and license and loot and spying and
secret service here and there in the east of Europe. It was the
flagellation of these senses which excited him to do all that man may do
and more.
He was going to play to the masterful Gorgio, and he would play as he had
never played before. He would pour the soul of his purpose into the
music--to win back or steal back, the lass sealed to him by the Starzke
River.
"Kismet!" he said aloud, and he rose from the chair to go to the violin,
but as he did so the door opened and Ingolby entered.
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