Page:MacGrath--The drums of jeopardy.djvu/328

318 touch of these strings. I warn you there is magic in this Amati. Will you risk it?"

Ordinarily—had this florid outburst come from another man—Kitty would have laughed. It had the air of piqued vanity; but she knew tha this was not the interpretation. On the streets he had been the most amusing and surprising comrade she had ever known, as merry and whimsical as Cutty—young and handsome—the real man. He had been real that night when he entered through her kitchen window, with the drums of jeopardy about his neck. He had been real that night she had brought him his wallet. Electric antagonism—the room seemed charged with it. The man had stepped aside for a moment and the great noble had taken his place. It was not because she had been reared in rather a theatrical atmosphere that she transcribed his attitude thus. She knew that he was noble. That she did not know his rank was of no consequence. Cutty's narrative, which she had pretended to believe, had set this man in the middle class. Never in this world. There was only one middle class out of which such a personality might, and often did, emerge—the American middle class. In Europe, never. No peasant blood, no middle-class corpuscle, stirred in this man's veins. The ancient boyar looked down at her.

"Play!" said Kitty. There was a smile on her