I DON’. know how many hours afterward I awoke. Gradually, as consciousness asserted itself, I realized that somebody was playing a violin in the adjacent room: and at length it struck me that it must be Merivale practicing. I pricked up my ears and hearkened. Oh, yes; he was running over his part of the last new composition we had studied. The clock-like tick-tack of his metronome marked the rhythm. I lay still and listened till he had repeated the same phrase some twenty times. Finally I got up and crossed the threshold that divided us.

Merivale kept on playing for a minute or two, unaware of my intrusion. Not till it behooved him to turn the page did he lift his eyes. Then, encountering my night-robed figure,they lighted up with merriment. Their owner lowered his instrument, remained silent for a moment, in the end gave vent to an uproarious peal of laughter.

“What are you laughing at?” I stammered.

When he had got his hilarity somewhat under control he replied: “At you. Come and gaze upon yourself.” And conducting me to a mirror he said, pointing, “There, isn’t that a funny sight?”

I looked sleepy, that was all. My hair was awry, and my eyes were heavy, and my costume was a trifle wrinkled. Still, I suppose, my general appearance was sufficiently ludicrous. Be that as it may, I could not help joining in Merivale’s laughter: and, thus put into good humor at the outset, I cheerfully complied with his request to hasten through my toilet and “come and fiddle with him.”

“Let’s start here,” he said, opening the book.

We read for a while in concert. As usual my arm seemed to swing of its separate will, I myself becoming all but comatose. By and by I perceived that Merivale had discontinued and was seated at one side with his instrument upon his knees. Then I perceived that I was no longer following the book. I closed my eyes and listened. As usual I heard the voice of my violin very much as though some other person had been the performer.

I found that I was playing a lot of bits from memory. I heard the light, quick tread of a gavotte which I had learned as a boy and meantime almost forgotten; I heard snatches from the chants the Chazzan sings in the synagogue; I heard the Flower Song from Faust mixing itself up with a recitative from Lohengrin. Then I heard the passionate wail of Chopin become predominant: the exquisite melody of the Berceuse, motives from Les Polonaises, and at length the impromptu in C-sharp minor—that to which I have alluded in the early part of this narrative, as descriptive of Veronika. Following it, came the songs that Veronika herself had been most prone to sing, Bizet, Pergolese, Schumann, morsels of German folk liede, old French romances. And ever and anon that phrase from the impromptu kept recurring. Every thing else seemed to lead up to it. It terminated a brilliant passage by Liszt. It cropped out in the middle of a theme from the Meistersinger. And with its every new recurrence, the picture of Veronika which it pre sented to my imagination grew more life-like and palpable, until ere long it was almost as though I saw her standing near me in substantial objective form. As I have said, I scarcely realized that it was I who played. Except for the sensation along my wrist as the bow bit the catgut, I believe I should have quite forgotten it. But now abruptly, without the least volition upon my part, my arm acquired a fresh vigor. The voice of my violin increased in volume. The character of the music underwent a change. From a medley of fragments it turned to a coherent, continuous whole. Note succeeded note in natural and inevitable sequence. I tried to recognize the composition. I could not. It was quite unfamiliar to me. Odd, because of course at some time I must have practiced it again and again. Otherwise how had I been able to play it now? It flowed from the strings without hitch or hesitancy. Yet my best efforts to place it were ineffectual. Doubly odd, because it was no ordinary composition. It had a striking individuality of its own.

It began with laughter-provoking scherzo, as dainty as the pattering of April rain-drops, as riotous as the frolicking of children let loose from school; which, by degrees tempering to a quieter allegro, presently modulated into the minor, and necessarily, therefore, became plaintive and sentimental. For a while bar succeeded bar, fitful and undetermined, as if groping blindly for a climax. Next, a quick, fluttering crescendo, and an exultant major chord. This completed the first movement. The second began pianissimo upon the A and E strings, an allegretto full of placid contentment; again, a minor modulation; again, blind groping for a climax, this time more strenuous than before, tinged by a passion, impelled by an insatiable desire; adagio on G and D, still minor; then a swift return to major, a leap of the bow and fingers back to A and E, and on these latter strings a rhapsody expressive of the utmost possible human joy. Third movement andante, sober but still joyous; the music, which hitherto had been restless and destitute of an apparent aim, seemed to have caught a purpose, to have gained substance and confidence in itself.

It proceeded in this wise for several periods, when sharply, without the faintest warning, it broke into a discordant shriek of laughter, the laughter of a demon whose evil designs had triumphed.

Though I had not recognized the composition, up to this point I had understood it perfectly. Its intrinsic lucidity carried the intelligence along. But henceforward I was mystified. The reason for the violent change of theme, time, and quality, I could not divine; nor could I appreciate, either, how the subsequent effects were produced or what they were meant to signify. My impression was, as I have said, that the laughter which my violin seemed to be echoing was demoniac laughter, the outburst of a Satan over his success, of a Succubus fastening upon his prey. Yet the next instant I was doubtful whether it was indeed laughter at all? Was it not perhaps the hysterical sobbing of a human being frenzied by grief? And again the next instant neither of these conceptions appeared to be the correct one. Was it not rather a chorus?—a chorus of witches?—plotting some fiendish atrocity?—chuckling over a vicious pleasantry?—now, whispering amicably together, now wrangling ferociously, now uniting in blood-curdling screams of delight? Whatever it might be, I could not penetrate its sense. I listened with deepening perplexity. I wished it would come to an end. But it did not occur to me to stop my arm and lay aside my bow. The music went on and on—until Merivale caught me by the shoulder and snatched my violin from my grasp. He was speaking.

The descent back to earth was too abrupt. It took me some time to gather myself together. “Eh—what were you saying?” I asked at last.

“I was saying, stop! Consider a fellow’s nervous system. Where in the name of Lucifer did you learn that infernal music? Whom is it by?”

“Oh,” I answered, “oh, I don’t know whom it is by.”

“It out-Berliozes Berlioz,” he added. “Is it his?”

“Perhaps. I don’t remember. I am tired. Let me rest a moment without talking.”

“Well,” he continued, “it was a terrible strain to listen to it. I am quite played out—feel as if—forgive the comparison—as if I had spent the last hour in a dentist’s chair. However, for relief’s sake, let’s go to dinner. Are you aware that we haven’t eaten any thing since early morning?”

After dinner Merivale insisted that we should take a long walk “to shake out the kinks,” and after the long walk we were tired enough to return to our pillows.

I went straight to sleep; but my sleep was troubled. As soon as Merivale had said goodnight and extinguished the gas, memory began to repeat the music I had played. I heard it throughout my sleep. Every little while I would wake up and try to banish it by fixing my attention on other matters. But it kept thrumming away in my brain despite myself. I could not silence it. Merivale’s reference to a dentist’s chair was, if inelegant, at least a graphic one. I got as hopelessly irritated as I could have done with a score of dentists simultaneously grinding at my teeth. My very arteries seemed to be beating to its rhythm.

In one fit of wakefulness, that lasted longer than its predecessors had done, I found myself unconsciously tattooing it upon the wall at my bed’s head.

“Is that you?” Merivale’s voice demanded from out of the darkness.

“Yes,” I replied. “Aren’t you asleep?”

“Mercy, no. That music you played—or rather, stray fragments of it, keep running through my brain. I haven’t been able to sleep for a long while.”

“That’s singular. It affects me the same way. I was just drumming it on the wall. I’ve been trying to get rid of it all night.”

“It has wonderful staying powers, for a fact. I’m glad you’re awake, though. Companionship in misery is sweet.”

“Yes, I also feel rather more comfortable now that you have spoken. Do you know, it’s an immense puzzle to me, that music? I can’t imagine where or when I ever learned it. And yet it is not the sort of thing one would be apt to forget. I can’t recognize the style even, can’t get a clew to the composer.”

“The style is emphatically that of Berlioz.”

“Perhaps so. But it can’t be by Berlioz, because I never learned any thing by Berlioz at all.”

“Hum!” A pause. Then, “Say, Lexow—”

“Well?”

“It isn’t possible that it’s original, is it?”

“Original? How do you mean?”

“Why, an improvisation—a little thing of your own.”

“Oh, no; oh, no, I never improvise—at least an entire composition, like that. Nobody does. It bears all the marks of careful workmanship. It must be something well-known that has temporarily slipped from my memory. It’s too striking not to be well-known. Tomorrow I’ll go through my music and find it; and I’ll wager it will turn out to be quite familiar. Only, it’s extremely odd that I can’t place it.”

“Why wait till to-morrow?”

“Why, we can’t begin to-night, can we?”

“Why not? I say, let’s begin right off. The cursed thing is keeping us awake, and there doesn’t seem to be any e............