"
Tcheriapin laughed, and lighted a fresh cigarette.
"Can you believe that a man could be so stupid? He never knew of
my existence, this big, red booby. He never knew that I existed
until--until his 'dream' had fled--with me! In a week we were in
Paris, that dream-girl and I--in a month we had quarrelled. I
always end these matters with a quarrel; it makes the complete
finish. She struck me in the face--and I laughed. She turned
and went away. We were tired of one another.
"Ah!" Again he airily kissed his hand. "There were others after
I had gone. I heard for a time. But her memory is like a rose,
fresh and fair and sweet. I am glad I can remember her so, and
not as she afterward became. That is the art of love. She
killed herself with absinthe, my friends. She died in Marseilles
in the first year of the great war."
Thus far Tcheriapin had proceeded, and was in the act of airily
flicking ash upon the floor, when, uttering a sound which I can
only describe as a roar, Andrews hurled himself upon the smiling
violinist.
His great red hands clutching Tcheriapin's throat, the insane
Scotsman, for insane he was at that moment, forced the other back
upon the settee from which he had half arisen.
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