I will stay for the next show. I will stay for the three shows. And each
time this magnifico will come out and make music. But better than that. I
will go back stage and talk with him. I will ask him: "How does it happen,
sir, that a man who can fiddle like you, a man who could play a duet with
Kreisler--how does it happen you're fiddling in a neighborhood movie and
vaudeville house?"

And he will unfold a story. Yes, there's a story there. Something happened
to this nobleman of the soiled white vest and the marvelous fingers. There
was an occurrence in this man's life which would make a good climax for a
second act.

No, that would spoil the picture. To find out, to learn the clumsy
mechanism behind this charming spectacle would take away. Better like
this. The lady at the piano. Ah, indeed, the lady at the piano, a very
elderly lady with a thin nose and hair that was once extremely beautiful,
perhaps she had something to do with it? The orchestra pounds and scrapes
away. And the movie jumps around and the heroine weeps, but somebody saves
her. "Where there is no faith there cannot be true love," confesses the
hero, folding her in his well-pressed arms. And that's that.

Now our friend, the baron, again. No, better to leave. He has left his
smile in the wings this time. He is very serious or perhaps very tired.
Two times tonight to play. Too much--too much.

My hat, and I will walk out on his nobs. And, anyway, Huneker wrote the
story long ago. About a piano player in Coney Island that he called--what
was it? Oh, yes, "A Chopin of the Gutter."