He went into the shadows and sat down in the same chair where he had been before. He smiled as he lit another cigarette. How strange moods were! how powerful for a moment, but how quickly over! The letters in his breast pocket seemed to glow out with material warmth, a warmth that went straight to his heart through the cloth and linen of his clothing. The new Ego was fed. Rita! Yes! at least life had given him this and was it not the treasure of treasures? There was nothing coarse nor earthly in this at least! The music of the Venusberg throbbed in all his pulses, calling, calling from the hollow hill. He did not realise from where it came--this magic music--and that there is more than one angelic choir. Rita and Gilbert. Gilbert and Rita! The words and music of one song! So we observe that now the masked musicians in the unseen orchestra are in their places. Any little trouble with the Management is over. Opposition players have sorrowfully departed. The Audience has willed it so, and the band only awaits its leader. Monsieur L'Ame du Vin, that celebrated conductor, has just slid into his seat. He smirks at his players, gives an intelligent glance at the first violin, and taps upon the desk. Three beats of the baton, a raised left hand, and once more the oft repeated overture to the Dance of Death commences, with the Fiend Alcohol beating time. Ingworth came back soon. There was a slight bruise upon his upper lip, but that was all. The two men--it was to be the last time in lives which had so strangely crossed--were friends in a sense that they had never been before. Both of them looked back upon that afternoon during the immediate days to come with regret and sorrow. Each remembered it differently, according to the depth of individual temperament. But it was remembered, as an hour when strife and turmoil had ceased; when, trembling on the brink of unforeseen events to come, there was pause and friendship, when the good in both of them rose to the surface for a little space and was observed of both. "Now, Dicker, you just watch. They'll all be here soon for their afternoon drink--the local bloods, I mean. It's their substitute for afternoon tea, don't you know. They sit here talking about nothing to friends who have devoted their lives to the subject. Watch it for your work. You'll learn a lot. That must have been the way in which Flaubert got his stuff for 'Madame Bovary.'" Something of the artist's fire animated the lad. He was no artist. He hadn't read "Madame Bovary," and it wouldn't have interested him if he had. But the plan appealed to him. It fitted in with his method of life. It was getting something for nothing. Yet he realised, to give him his due, a little more than this. He was sitting at the feet of his Master. But as it happened, on that afternoon the local bloods were otherwise employed, for at any rate they made no appearance.