Nigel looked into the stranger's face, and again experienced a slight shock of surprise. The eyes in the midst of its florid circumference were haunted with despair, grief-stricken and appealing. He suddenly realised that it was not normal for a man to spend Christmas day in lonely petrol prowlings. "Play some more." "I can only play Verdi and Balfe and those others." "Well, I'll try to endure it." "Look here," said Furlonger, "what's your game? Why should you want me to play when you hate my music?" "I hate your music, but I like your playing. You are a wonderful player." "Oh, rats!" and Nigel felt angry, he did not know why. "I repeat--you are a wonderful player. Who taught you?" "Carl Hauptmann." "Hauptmann!--he was a pupil of mine." "Then you're Eitel von Gleichroeder!" "I am." Nigel looked interested. Memories of his life in London revived--music lessons, concerts, musical jargon, a lost world in which he had once lived, but had now almost forgotten. He seemed to hear Hauptmann's strange, coughing laugh as he chid his pupil for what von Gleichroeder had just chidden him now--his abominable taste. "You are hobeless, hobeless--you and your Balfe and your Bellini and your odder vons." Von Gleichroeder he knew would take an even more serious view of the case, as he had a reputation for ultra-modernism in music. Hauptmann's contempt for Balfe and Bellini he carried on to Verdi and Gounod, even Tschaikowsky, while though he was obliged to grant Beethoven supremacy with a grudge, he passed over his works in favour of those of Scriabin, d'Indy, Debussy and Strauss. "Well, well," said the musician, "play _Zampa_, play _Lucia di Lammermoor_, play _La Somnambula_--any abomination you please--but play." Nigel, with rather an evil grin, played _Zampa_. "Why do you like those things?" "Because they are pretty tunes." "Ach!--and why do you like pretty tunes?" Nigel stared at him full of hostility, then his manner changed. "Because they remind me of--of things I used to feel." He realised dimly that there was a subtle free-masonry between him and this man. In a way it drew them together, in a way it held them apart. "What you used to feel. So! that is better. It's your heart they tickle, not your ears." Furlonger nodded. "Do you play for your living?" "No--I am a farmer." "Then what are you doing here?" "I play for children to dance." Von Gleichroeder looked round, and shrugged his shoulders. He did not seem particularly surprised. "Would you not like to play for grown-up children to dance? For fashionable society to crowd to hear you, and gather round you like children round a barrel-organ?" "Fashionable society won't waste much of its time on me. I've been in prison three years for bogus company promoting." "So! But that is good. Without that attraction you could fill the Bechstein, but with it you can fill the Albert Hall." "Gammon."