At eight o'clock that evening he sent this note to her from the café where he was dining: “Will be at stage door with carriage at eleven, as before.” He was there at eleven. So was the tenor. The little Tyrrell came out and looked from one to the other. Billy pointed to his waiting carriage. The dancer took the tenor's arm and said: “I'm sorry I can't accept your invitation, Mr. Folsom. Really I'm very much obliged to you, but I have an engagement.” She went off with the tenor, and Billy went off with the cab and made himself drunker than he had ever been in his life. At dawn his feet were seen protruding from the window of a coupé that was being driven up Broadway, and he was bawling forth, as best he could, the tune which had served indirectly to bring the little Tyrrell into his life. After that night, it was the old story, a woman ridding herself of a man for whom she had never cared, and who indeed was not worth caring for. But the operation was just as hard upon Folsom as if he had been. You know the stages of the process. She began by being not at home or just about to go out. He wrote pleading notes to her, in boyish phraseology, and she laughed over these with the tenor. He made the breaking off the more painful by going nightly to see her dance that fatal melody. He watched her from afar upon the street, and almost invariably saw the tenor by her side. He drank continually, and he begged Ted Clarke to tell her, in a casual way, that he was going to the dogs on account of her treatment of him. Whereupon she laughed and then looked scornful, saying: “If he's fool enough to drink himself to death because a woman didn't happen to fall in love with him, the sooner he finishes the work the better. I have no use for such a man.” No one has, and I told Billy so. But he kept up his pace toward the goal of confirmed drunkenness. He ceased his attendance at the theatre where she danced, only after he learned that the tenor had married her. But that dance of hers had become a part of his life. Its accompanying tune was now as necessary to his aural sensibilities as food to his stomach. He therefore spent his evenings going to theatres and concert-halls where “La Gitana” was likely to be sung or played. He rarely sought in vain. The melody was to be found serving some purpose or other at almost every theatre that winter. It was the “Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay” of its time.