THE SECOND FIDDLE BY PHYLLIS BOTTOME AUTHOR OF "THE DARK TOWER," "THE DERELICT AND OTHER STORIES," ETC. ILLUSTRATED BY NORMAN PRICE NEW YORK THE CENTURY CO. 1917 Copyright, 1917, by THE CENTURY Co. _Published, October, 1917_ TO MARGUERITE AND LILIAN TWO SISTERS WHO, ALIKE IN JOY AND SORROW, ARE A LIGHT TO THEIR FRIENDS [Illustration: "Then have the kindness to inform me ... why Marian has consented to marry me."] LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS PAGE "Then have the kindness to inform me ... why Marian has consented to marry me" _Frontispiece_ A proclamation was read by a great person from a bedizened balcony 19 "I'm afraid I don't like big feelings much" 91 "Women like you can't marry logs of wood" 141 "This," Stella thought to herself, "is like a battle" 165 Her voice was unfettered music 189 She tugged and twisted again 265 The most extraordinary figure we had ever seen 295 "Not very clever of you," he murmured, "not to guess why I wanted a taxi" 349 THE SECOND FIDDLE CHAPTER I On the whole, Stella preferred the Cottage Dairy Company to the People's Restaurant. It was a shade more expensive, but if you ate less and liked it more, that was your own affair. You were waited on with more arrogance and less speed, but you made up for that artistically by an evasion of visible grossness. Stella had never gone very much further than a ham sandwich in either place. You knew where you were with a ham sandwich, and you could disguise it with mustard. On this occasion she took a cup of tea and made her meal an amalgamation. She hoped to leave work early, and she would have no time for tea. She was going to hear Chaliapine. All London--all the London, that is, which thinks of itself as London--was raving about Chaliapine; but Stella in general neither knew nor cared for the ravings of London. They reached her as vaguely as the sound of breaking surf reaches the denizens of the deeper seas. It was her sister Eurydice who had brought Chaliapine home to her. She had said quite plainly, with that intensity which distinguished both her utterances and her actions, that if she didn't hear Chaliapine she would die. He was like an ache in her bones. Eurydice had never discovered that you cannot always do what you want or have what you very ardently wish to have. She believed that disappointment was a coincidence or a lack of fervency, and she set herself before each obstacle to her will like the prophets of Baal before their deaf god. She cut herself with knives till the blood ran. Stella hovered anxiously by her side, stanching, whenever she was able, the flowing of Eurydice's blood. On this occasion she had only to provide seven shillings and to make, what cost her considerably more, a request to Mr. Leslie Travers to let her off at five.