‘You are passionately attached to Miss Allen,’ said Carl. ‘She is the only sweetheart I ever had, responded simple Christopher with shy merriment. Rubach sat down at the piano and sang this song:-- Through all the green glad summer-time Love told his tale in dainty rhyme, And sighed his loves out one by one, There lives no echo of his laugh, I but record his epitaph, And sigh for love worn out and gone. For love endures for little time, But dies with every change of rhyme, And lives again with every one. And every new-born love doth laugh Above his brother’s epitaph, The last light love worn out and gone. ‘That is not your doctrine, mon ami,’ he said as he turned round on the music-stool. ‘You are faithful to Miss Allen?’ ‘I am faithful to Miss Allen, certainly,’ said Christopher, reaching out his hand for the violin, and again chuckling weakly. ‘No,’ said Carl, rising and confiscating the fiddle. ‘You shall sing her virtues to that tune no more. Write a new tune for her.’ Anybody who has been in love, and I do not care for any other sort of reader, may fancy for himself the peculiar enjoyment which shy Christopher extracted from this homely badinage. Two or three days later he was almost reestablished, and had indeed begun to write a little. He would not yet go to the theatre, however, having some fear of the excitement. He sat alone in the sitting-room which he and his chum occupied in common, dreaming of Barbara over a book, and building cloud palaces. It was ten o’clock in the evening, and Carl would not be home till midnight. Then ‘who was this dashing tumultuously up the stone steps after Carl’s accustomed fashion? Carl himself, it seemed, but unlike himself, pale and breathless, and with an ugly scratch across his forehead which looked at first sight like a severe wound. ‘What’s the matter?’ cried Christopher, rising hastily. ‘I have had a fall,’ said Carl. ‘There is nothing to be alarmed at, but,’ holding out his left hand, ‘I have sprained my wrist and I cannot play.’ ‘How did it happen?’ asked Christopher, following him into the bedroom, where Carl had already begun to twine a wet handkerchief round the injured wrist. ‘I was crossing the stage between the acts,’ said Carl; ‘a plank had been moved, and I set my foot in the hole and fell--voilà tout I want to ask you to play for me. There is not a man in the band who can do justice to “When Love has flown.” It will be no trouble to you. You will simply have to stand in the flies and play the air whilst a man on the stage appears to play it, sawing away with a soaped bow. Will you come?’