“In Italy,” said Neroda, “a fiddler, if he really knows how to play dance music, can dance as well as play.  In those nights on the East Side, in New York, when I played for the workmen and working girls in their cheap finery, I went among the dancers myself while I played, and they always gave me a round of applause and danced harder themselves.”

Anita suddenly swept the strings with her bow and dashed into another Hungarian dance of Brahms, herself taking pretty dancing steps and pirouetting as she played, sinking upon one knee and then rising, the toe of her little slipper pointing skyward.  She felt an unaccountable gaiety of heart that day.  Why, she knew not, only that some strong current of emotion inspired her arms, her hands, her little, twinkling feet, as she danced the length of the drawing-room and back again.  Suddenly the music stopped with a crash.  She looked up and saw Broussard standing in the door.

“Thank you, thank you!” said Broussard, advancing and bowing and smiling.  “I have seen it all.  When you dance and play at the same time, you can master the heart of a man, as well as that of a violin.”

Anita stood still for a moment, thrilled with the shock of joy at seeing Broussard.  She laid her violin and bow down on the piano, and gave him her hand, which trembled in his.  Broussard’s first thought was that Anita was grown into a woman.  Anita’s first glance at Broussard showed her that he was thin and sallow, and that his clothes hung loosely upon him, and that, in spite of his smile and playful words, his mind was not at ease.

Neroda, standing near, saw the glow in the eyes of Anita and Broussard, and as they had evidently forgotten his existence, he slipped, without a word, out of the room.  The next moment Colonel Fortescue walked in.

All at once, Anita and Broussard assumed strictly conventional attitudes; poetry became prose, music became silence.  Broussard hastened to explain his presence, after exchanging greetings with Colonel Fortescue.

“I came on private business, sir,” he said, “very important.  Not finding you at the headquarters building, I ventured to come to your house, as I wished to see you immediately.”

“Will you come into my office?” said the Colonel, in a business-like voice, which seemed to reduce Anita to the age of the After-Clap, and classify Broussard with the poker that stood by the fireplace.

The two men crossed the hall and entered the private office and sat down.  Then Colonel Fortescue noticed that Broussard looked haggard and worn, and his dark skin had turned darker.  His face and manner assumed a gravity which made Colonel Fortescue feel that Broussard’s errand was not one of pleasure.

“I am on sick leave,” said Broussard.  “We were in the jungles eight months and every one of us had fever.  I was the last to come down, and I had a bad case.  The doctors sent me home for three months, and when I go back—­for I didn’t mean to let the infernal climate out there get the better of me—­I shall be in Guam.  That’s paradise compared with the interior.”