"
"He tore his hair and screamed in your warm-blooded French manner?"
"That he did."
The doctor stood in the bar of candle-light which one of the shop
sconces extended across the room, and lifted the violin to his neck. He
was so large that all his gestures had a ponderous quality. His dress
was disarranged by riding, and his blond skin was pricked through by the
untidy growth of a three-days' beard, yet he looked very handsome.
Dr. Dunlap stood in the light, but Father Baby chose the dark for those
ecstatic antics into which the fiddle threw him. He leaped high from
the floor at the first note, and came down into a jig of the most
perfect execution. The pat of his bare soles was exquisitely true. He
raised the gown above his ankles, and would have seemed to float but for
his response in sound. Yet through his most rapturous action he never
ceased to be conscious of the shop. A step on the sill would break the
violin's charm in the centre of a measure.
But this time no step broke it, and the doctor kept his puppet friar
going until his own arm began to weary.
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