"Do you think it was quite wise to let him go?" said my brother-in-law, with compressed lips. The Nice Boy is horribly afraid of my brother-in-law. "I'll--I'll go out and--and get him," he gasped, and dashed out into the dark, cursing himself for a fool. This was unfortunate, for in five seconds more Mr. Decker had reeled into the room. He explained in a very thick voice that he had never been able to play without the drink; that a little brandy set his fingers free, but that he had taken too much and must rest. When the Nice Boy got back--he had brought two great pails of cold water and a fresh dress-shirt--it was too late. The man lay in a heap on the floor, and my brother-in-law stood, white and raging, talking to the heap. The man was drunkenly, horribly asleep. The Boy said that the worst five minutes he ever spent were those in which he poured water over the heap on the floor and shook it, my brother-in-law watching with an absolutely indescribable expression! Then he got out on the platform and said something. Mr. Decker had met with an accident--would some one get a doctor?--was there perhaps a doctor in the audience?--they could realise his position--and more of that sort. I knew well enough. When the doctor went in he found the Boy shaking the drunken brute on the floor, and they told the doctor all about it, and then went out by the other door. And they got a carriage and took Decker to the hotel. I don't know--it seemed not wholly his fault. And his face showed that he had suffered. But the men would hear nothing of that. My brother-in-law says that for a woman who is really as hard as nails I have more apparent and æsthetic sympathy than any one he ever knew. And that may be so. The people took it very nicely. They cleared the floor, and the younger ones danced and the older ones talked, and the manager sent over ices and coffee, and it turned out the affair of the season. And they were all very grateful to my brother-in-law and his friend, and quite forgot about the strange artist. Whether he ever fully realised what the evening had been we never knew, because when they went in the next morning to see how he was, they found him dead. The doctor said that the excitement, the terror, the sudden cutting off of liquor, with the sudden wild drinking, were too much for an overstrained heart, and that he had probably died soon after he was carried to his room. It seemed to me a little sad that while they were dancing, the man whom they had come to see----. But my brother-in-law says that I turn to the morbid view of things, and that that was the very blessing of the whole affair--that the crowd should have been so pleased, and that the horrible situation should have ended so smoothly. Because such a man is better dead, he says. And of course he is right. Life would be horrible to him, one can see.