ng--O I think it is heavy with love, with love.'"

"Walt Whitman," he told her. "They're all out of a poem called
_Sea-Drift_."

She went on reading, now audibly, now with a mere silent movement of the
lips, half puzzled, half entranced, and catching--despite her protest
that she could not read the music,--some intimations of its intense
strange beauty.

"' ..._do I not see my love fluttering out among the breakers?... Loud I
call to you, my love ... Surely you must know who is here ... O rising
stars! Perhaps the one I want so much will rise ... with some of you ...
O trembling throat! Sound clearer through the atmosphere_ ...'"

With a shake of the head, like one trying to stop the weaving of a spell,
she turned the pages back to the beginning.

"This means Novelli," she said. "I'll get him. I'll get him this morning.
He's the best accompanist in Chicago. We'll go to work on them and when
we've got them presentable, I'll let you know and sing them to you.
Where do you live?"

He got up for a paper and pencil and wrote out an address and a telephone
number. She was still staring at that first page of the score when he
brought it back to her.

"I've never heard any of those songs myself," he told her.

At that she looked around at him, looked steadily into his face for a
moment and then her eyes filled with tears. She reached out both hands
and took him by the shoulders. "Well, you're going to hear them this
time, my dear," she said. As she moved away, she added in a more
matter-of-fact tone, "Just as soon as we can work them up, in a few days
perhaps. I'll let you know."

CHAPTER III

THE PEACE BASIS

There were four in their party but it was only with Alfred Baldwin that
Mary Wollaston danced. The other man--Black his name was, and he came
from Iowa City or Dubuque or thereabouts--devoted all his attention to
Baldwin's wife. He was very rich, very much married--out in Iowa--and
whenever he made his annual business trip to New York, he liked to have a
real New York time. They had dined together at the Baldwins' apartment
with a vague idea of going afterward to see a play of Baldwin's then
drawing toward the close of a successful season's run. But dinner had
been late and they had lingered too long over it to make this excursion
worth while. It had amused both Mary and Christabel to discover Black's
secret hope of being taken back-stage and introduced to the beautiful
young star who was playing in