"Well," she said, joining him, "well! Give an account of yourself, sir!" Pobloff watched her, completely stupefied. Only his discipline, his routine had carried him through this tremendous resurrection: he had beaten time from a sense of duty—why he found himself at the head of his band he understood not. He only knew that the experiment of playing the enchanted symphony backward was a success: that it had become disenchanted; that Luga, his violet, his harpist, his wife was restored to him to bring him the wonderful tidings. He put his arms around her. She drew back in her primmest attitude.
"No, not yet, Pobloff. Not until you tell me where you have been all day." He sat down and wept, wept as if his heart would strain and crack; and then the situation poking him in the risible rib he laughed until Luga herself relaxed.
"It may be very funny to you, husband, and no doubt you've had a jolly time, but you've not told where or with whom." Pobloff seized her by the wrists.
"Where were you? What have you been doing, woman? What was it like, that strange country which you visited, and from which you are so marvellously returned to me like a stone upcast by a crater?" She lifted her eyebrows in astonishment.
"You know, Pobloff, I have warned you about your tendency to apoplexy. You bother your brain, such as it is, too much with figures. Stick to your last, Mr. Shoemaker, and don't eat so much. When you fell off the stage this morning I was sure you were killed, and we were all very much alarmed. But after the hornist told us you would be all right in a few hours, we—" "Whom do you mean by we, Luga?" "The men, of course." "And you saw me faint?" "Certainly, Pobloff."
"Where did you go, wife?" "Go? Nowhere. We remained here. Besides, the doors were locked, and the men couldn't get away." "And you saw nothing strange, did not notice that you were out of my sight, out of the town's sight, for over thirty hours?" "Pobloff," she vixenishly declared, "you've been at the vodka."
"And so there is no true perception of time in the fourth dimension of space," he sadly reflected. His brows became dark with jealousy: "What did you do all the time?" That accursed horn-player in her company for over a day!
"Do?" "Yes," he repeated, "do? Were there no wonderful sights? Didn't you catch a glimpse, as through an open door, of rare planetary vistas, of a remoter plane of existence? Were there no grandiose and untrodden stars? O Luga, tell me!—you are a woman of imagination—what did you see, hear, feel in that many-colored land, out of time, out of space?"
"See?" she echoed irritably, for she was annoyed by her husband's poetic foolery, "what could I see in this hall? When the men weren't grumbling at having nothing to drink, they were playing pinochle."
"They played cards in the fourth dimension of space!" Pobloff boomed out reproachfully, sorrowfully. Then he went meekly to his home with Luga, the harpist.