lessly during the long hot night. I was up very early and went to the garden as usual, but now lonely and miserable, to have my breakfast. The butler, more cynical than ever, brought the tray. A gardenia and a note were added touches. They were Edith's farewells. She had departed for a motor trip through the Abruzzi. She might return in three weeks. I was welcome to stay at the villa and wait or. . . . And so that summer ended.
A month later, Edith was back in New York and again I saw a good deal of her. She asked for news of Peter but I had none to give her. Other friends of mine who had heard about him from Edith, expressed a desire to meet him but, so far as I was concerned, I did not even know whether or not he was alive. In December, however, passing through Stuyvesant Square with its gaunt bare trees, the old red-brick Quaker school-houses, and the stately but ugly Saint George's, on my way to Second Avenue, where I intended to visit a shop where Hungarian music might be procured, I found him, sitting alone on a bench.
I am too happy to see you again, he greeted me, but only you. Edith must not be told that I am in New York, for at last I am working and I can afford no interruptions. Edith has a way of breaking up the rhythm of one's life and my life is very rhythmic just now. Do you remember, one night at the villa, there was some conversation about formule and black magic?
