st suitable thing in the world, if you were to sing at
the funeral. I knew you wouldn't enjoy doing it, all things considered;
but I couldn't say so to my uncle. All in all, it is a relief to have
this other affair knock it in the head."

To Bobby, the pause was scarcely perceptible. To Thayer, it sufficed to
review the years between his meeting Lorimer in Goettingen and that last
gray dawn in the cottage.

"But it doesn't," Thayer said then.

"You don't mean--?"

"I will sing. We rehearse in the morning, and I have nothing afterwards
until evening. What time is the service?"

Bobby Dane's call left Thayer feeling once more at war with himself.
Worn out with the long strain of watching over Lorimer, exhausted with
the agony of that hour in the cottage, it had been a relief to him, now
that his work was ended, to throw himself wholly into the preparations
for _Faust_. The needed rehearsals and the inevitable details of
costuming had been sufficient to occupy his tired mind completely, and
he had held firmly to his resolve to forget the past two months. He had
been able to accomplish this only by getting a strong grip upon his own
mind and holding on tightly and steadily; but he had accomplished it.
Bobby left him with it all to do over again. In spite of himself,
Beatrix's desperate question for "the black, blank years," drowned the
familiar words of his cavatina and set themselves in their place,--

_"Even black, blank years shall pass."_

Impatiently he shut the piano and, sitting down at his desk, began
studying aloud the list of stage directions which outlined his acting;
but, in the intervals of turning a page, he asked himself over and over
again whether any other life could hold a grimmer contrast than the one
confronting him, that coming Wednesday afternoon and evening.

Wednesday came at last. Thayer had left his card at the Lorimers' house,
the day before; but he had felt no surprise that Beatrix had refused to
see him. He caught no glimpse of her until the hour for the funeral, and
he felt that it was better so. For the present, their lives must lie in
different paths.

As Bobby had predicted, Sidney Lorimer's funeral was a function.
Everything about it was above criticism, with the minor exception of
the manner in which Lorimer had met his end. Society, black-clothed and
sombre-faced, was present, partly from respect to the Danes, partly from
a real liking for Lorimer as they had known him at f