Then another eight or ten years passed, and now, in a waterside public at Bordeaux, an obscure old pianist was playing Pair’s setting of ‘Lavender’s blue,’ and stirring a hundred bitter-sweet far-away memories of my friend.  It was as if fifteen years were erased from my life.  The face of Godelinette was palpable before me—­pale, with its sad little smile, its bright appealing eyes.  Edmund might have been smoking across the table—­I could hear his voice, I could have put out my hand and touched him.  And all round me were the streets, the lights, the smells, the busy youthful va-et-vient of the Latin Quarter; and in my heart the yearning, half joy and all despair and anguish, with which we think of the old days when we were young, of how real and dear they were, of how irrecoverable they are.

And then the music stopped, the Brasserie des Quatre Vents became a glaring reality, and the painted female sipping eau-de-vie at my elbow remarked plaintively, ’Tu n’es pas rigolo, toi.  Veux-tu faire une valse?’

‘I must speak to your musician,’ I said.  ‘Excuse me.’

He had played a bit of Pair’s music.  It was one chance in a thousand, but I wanted to ask him whether he could tell me anything about the composer.  So I penetrated to the bottom of the shop, and approached his platform.  He was bending over some sheets of music—­making his next selection, doubtless.

‘I beg your pardon—­,’ I began.

He turned towards me.  You will not be surprised—­I was looking into Pair’s own face.

* * * * *

You will not be surprised, but you will imagine what it was for me.  Oh, yes, I recognised him instantly; there could be no mistake.  And he recognised me, for he flushed, and winced, and started back.

I suppose for a little while we were both of us speechless, speechless and motionless, while our hearts stopped beating.  By-and-by I think I said—­something had to be said to break the situation—­I think I said, ‘It’s you, Edmund?’ I remember he fumbled with a sheet of music, and kept his eyes bent on it, and muttered something inarticulate.  Then there was another speechless, helpless suspension.  He continued to fumble his music without looking up.  At last I remember saying, through a sort of sickness and giddiness, ’Let us get out of here—­where we can talk.’

‘I can’t leave yet.  I’ve got another dance,’ he answered.

‘Well, I’ll wait,’ said I.

I sat down near him and waited, trying to create some kind of order out of the chaos in my mind, and half automatically watching and considering him as he played his dance—­Edmund Pair playing a dance for prostitutes and drunken sailors.  He was not greatly changed.  There were the same grey eyes, deep-set and wide apart, under the same broad forehead; the same fine nose and chin, the same sensitive mouth.  The whole face was pretty much the same, only thinner