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forgiven and forgotten. One day, long after his friends had graduated, he disappeared from the city without a word. For a few months he sent post cards from various Russian and Polish cities, and once Fridolin, who was one of Nachtigall's favorites, was reminded of his existence not only by a card, but by a request for a moderate sum of money, without explanation. Fridolin sent it at once, but never received a word of thanks or any other sign of life from Nachtigall.
    At this moment, however, eight years later, at a quarter to one in the morning, Nachtigall insisted on paying his debt, and took the exact amount in bank-notes from a rather shabby pocket-book. As the latter was fairly well filled, Fridolin accepted the repayment with a good conscience.
    "Are you getting along well," he asked with a smile, in order to make sure.
    "I can't complain," replied Nachtigall. Placing his hand on Fridolin's arm, he continued: "But tell me, why are you here so late at night?"
    Fridolin explained that he had needed a cup of coffee after visiting a patient, although he didn't say, without quite knowing why, that he hadn't found his patient alive. Then he talked in very general terms of his duties at the hospital and his private practice, and mentioned that he was happily married, and the father of a six-year old girl.
    Nachtigall in his turn, explained that he had spent the time as a pianist in every possible sort of Polish, Roumanian, Serbian and Bulgarian city and town, just as Fridolin had surmised. He had a wife and four children living in Lemberg, and he laughed heartily, as though it were unusually jolly to have four children, all of them living in Lemberg, and all by one and the same woman. He had been back in Vienna since the preceding fall. The vaudeville company he had been with had suddenly gone to pieces. He was now playing anywhere and everywhere, anything that happened to come along, sometimes in two or three different houses the same night. For example, down there in that basement—not at all a fashionable place, as he remarked, really a sort of bowling alley, and with very doubtful patrons... "But if you have to provide for four children and a wife in Lemberg"—he laughed again, though not quite as gaily as before, and added: "But sometimes I am privately engaged." Noticing a reminiscent smile on Fridolin's face, he continued: "Not just in the houses of bankers and such, but in all kinds of circles, even larger ones, both public and secret."
    "Secret?" Fridolin asked.
    Nachtigall looked straight before him with a gloomy and crafty air, and said: "They will be calling for me again in a minute."
    "What, are you playing somewhere else tonight?"
    "Yes, they only begin there at two."
    "It must be an unusually smart place."
    "Yes and no," said Nachtigall, laughing, but he became serious again at once.
    "Yes and no?" queried Fridolin, curiously.
    Nachtigall bent across the table.
    "I'm playing tonight in a private house, but I don't know whose it is."
    "Then you're playing there for the first time?" Fridolin asked with increasing interest.
    "No, it's the third time, but it will probably be a different house again."
    "I don't understand."
    "Neither do I," said Nachtigall, laughing, "but you'd better not ask any more."
    "Oh, I see," remarked Fridolin.
    "No, you're wrong. It's not what you think. I've seen a great deal in my time. It's unbelievable what one sees in such small towns, especially in Roumania, but here . . ." He drew back the yellow curtain from the window, looked out on the street and said as if to himself: "Not here yet." Then he turned to Fridolin and explained: "I mean the carriage. There's always a carriage to call for me, a different one each time."
    "You're making me very curious, Nachtigall," Fridolin assured him.
    "Listen to me," said Nachtigall after a slight pause. "I'd like to be able to arrange it—'but how can I do it—" Suddenly he burst out: "Have you got plenty of nerve?"
    "That's a strange question,"