attached to the wrists of a fat man. They were slim, nervous,
sensitive hands, pink-tipped, tapering, blue-veined, delicate. As Emma
McChesney stared at them the man turned slowly on the revolving stool.
His plump, pink face was dolorous, sagging, wan-eyed.

He watched Emma McChesney as she sat up and dried her eyes. A
satisfied light dawned in his face.

"Thanks," he said, and mopped his forehead and chin and neck with the
brown-edged handkerchief.

"You--you can't be Paderewski. He's thin. But if he plays any better
than that, then I don't want to hear him. You've upset me for the rest
of the week. You've started me thinking about things--about things
that--that-"

The fat man clasped his thin, nervous hands in front of him and leaned
forward.

"About things that you're trying to forget. It starts me that way,
too. That's why sometimes I don't touch the keys for weeks. Say, what
do you think of a man who can play like that, and who is out on the
road for a living just because he knows it's a sure thing? Music!
That's my gift. And I've buried it. Why? Because the public won't take
a fat man seriously. When he sits down at the piano they begin to howl
for Italian rag. Why, I'd rather play the piano in a five-cent moving
picture house than do what I'm doing now. But the old man wanted his
son to be a business man, not a crazy, piano-playing galoot. That's
the way he put it. And I was darn fool enough to think he was right.
Why can't people stand up and do the things they're out to do! Not one