From that meeting sprang a warm friendship, the most complete that Morgan had ever known! It made the old man comfortable, gained him better quarters and broadened the horizon toward which his sun of life was setting. It would go down with some of the colors of its morning. It became Edward's custom to take his old friend to hear the best operas and concerts, and one night they heard the immortal Cambia sing. It was a charity concert and her first appearance in many years. When the idol of the older Paris came to the footlights for the sixth time to bow her thanks for the ovation given her, she smiled and sang in German a love song, indescribable in its passion and tenderness. It was a burst of melody from the heart of some man, great one moment in his life at least. Edward found himself standing when the tumult ceased. Benoni had sunk from his chair to his knees and was but half-conscious. The excitement had partially paralyzed him. The lithe fingers of the left hand were dead. They would never rest again upon the strings of his great violin--the Cremona to which in sickness and poverty, although its sale would have enriched him, he clung with the faith and instinct of the artist. There came the day when Edward was ready to depart to America. He went to say good-bye, and this is what happened: The old man held Edward's hands long in silence, but his lips moved in prayer; then lifting the instrument, he placed it in the young man's arms. "Take it," he said. "I may never meet you again. It is the one thing that I have been true to all my life. I will not leave it to the base and heartless." And so Edward, to please him, accepted the trust. He would return some day; many hours should the violin sing for the old man. As he stood he drew the bow and played one strain of Cambia's song and the blind man lifted his face in sudden excitement. As Edward paused he called the notes until it was complete. "Now again," he said, singing: If thou couldst love me As I do love thee, Then wouldst thou come to me, Come to me. Never forsaking me, Never, oh, never Forsaking me. Oceans may roll between, Thine home and thee Love, if thou lovest me Lovest me, What care we, you and I? Through all eternity, I love thee, darling one, Love me; love me. "You have found the secret," said Benoni; "the chords on the lower octaves made the song." And so they had parted! The blind man to wait for the final summons; the young man to plunge into complications beyond his wildest dreams. "A man," said Virdow once, "is a tribe made up of himself, his family and his friends." And this was the history in outline of the man to whom Rita Morgan handed the violin that fateful day when Gerald lay face down among the pillows of his divan.