On the table near the window, his violin lay as he had left it.  The case was standing in a corner and his music stand had toppled over.  The torn sheets of music rustled idly on the floor, and he wondered, fretfully, why the woman in white did not pick them up.

As if in answer to his thought, she stooped, and gathered them together, quietly sorting the pages and putting them into the open drawer that held his music.  She closed the drawer and folded up his music stand without making a sound.  She seemed far removed from him, like someone from another world.

Cloud surrounded her, but he caught glimpses of her through it occasionally.  She took up his violin, very carefully, put it into its case, and carried it out of the room.  He did not care very much, but it seemed rather an impolite thing to do.  He knew that he would not have stolen a violin when the owner was in the same room.

Soon she came back and he was reassured.  She had not stolen it after all.  She might have broken it, for she seemed to feel very sorry about something.  She was wiping her eyes with a bit of white, as women always did when they cried.

It was not necessary for her to cry, on account of one broken violin, for he had thousands of them—­Stradivarius, Amati, Cremona; everything.  Some of them were highly coloured and very rare on that account.  He had only to go to his storehouse, present a ticket, and choose whatever he liked—­red, green, yellow, or even striped.

Everybody who played the violin needed a great many of them, for the different moods of music.  It was obvious that the dark brown violin with which he played slow, sad music could not be used for the Hungarian Dances.  He had a special violin for those, striped with barbaric colour.

The woman who had broken one of his violins stood at the window with her back toward him.  Her shoulders shook and from time to time she lifted the bit of white to her eyes.  It was annoying, he thought; even worse than the shadows and the fire.  He was about to call to her and suggest, ironically, that she had cried enough and that the flowers would be spoiled if they got too wet, when someone called, from the next room:  “Miss Rose!”

She turned quickly, wiped her eyes once more, and, without making a sound, went out on the white cloud that surrounded her half way to her waist.

He tried to change his position a little and felt his own bed under him.  His body was stiff and sore, but he had the use of it, except his left arm.  Try as he might, he could not move it, for it was weighted down and it hurt terribly.

“Miss Rose, Miss Rose, Miss Rose, Miss Rose.”  The words beat hard in his ears like a clock ticking loudly.  The accent was on the “Miss”—­the last word was much fainter.  “Rose Miss” was wrong, so the other must be right, except for the misplaced accent.  Did the accent always come on the first beat of a measure?  He had forgotten, but he would ask the man at the storehouse when he went to get the striped violin for the Hungarian Dances.